Lady Mother
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: What if Joanna Lannister, Rhaella Targaryen and Lyanna Stark had not died in childbirth? Three one-shots.
1. Joanna

_"Cersei promised Elia to show you to us. The day before we were to sail, whilst my mother and your father were closeted together, she and __Jaime took us down to your nursery. Your wet nurse tried to send us off, but your sister was having none of that. 'He's mine', she said, 'and you're __just a milk cow, you can't tel me what to do. Be quiet or I'l have my father cut your tongue out. A cow doesn't need a tongue, only udders.' "_

**\- A Storm of Swords**

* * *

**273 AC**

**Casterly Rock**

"I never hurt him. I was only showing them the little monster." The child's voice rises, strident with temper. "And what if I _did_?"

"Cersei." At the rustle of her skirts, the wet-nurse sinks with relief into a deep curtsey. Joanna waits at the landing of the flight of stairs until her daughter dips down as well. She does so with the poorest grace in the world. "You will not speak so of your trueborn brother."

"I beg pardon, my lady mother," the girl says and then, unable to help herself, bursts out, "But _she _had no place to question me. She's just an udder with legs!"

The wet-nurse flushes and looks to her mistress expectantly, but Joanna does not spare her a glance. "It was not her place to speak out of turn to you and in such a fashion," she acknowledges frostily, "but then, neither was it yours to flaunt your brother to our guests like a peddler's gimmick."

"But he is!" Cersei bursts out. "Just like a two-headed calf. They thought he had a tail and scales and horns - that's what they all think about him! That he's a little monster. And he _is_."

Joanna ignores her. "Myrma, you will take yourself to Lady Dorna to see about your wages. And then you will see yourself and your boy out."

"My lady!" The young woman sinks to her knees but one look from the Lady of the Rock quells her and with a hiccuping sob, she turns and flees down the corridor.

_Too soft, _Joanna thinks critically. _The next one will need iron in her spine and vinegar in her tongue if she's to deal with the twins when they come visiting. _Before the smirk on Cersei's face can blossom fully, Joanna adds, "And you, mistress, will spend all of today and tomorrow tacking and basting sheets with my women. A little hemming might teach you humility."

"But _mother_-"

Joanna does not slap her, although there's many a mother that would. Instead, she flicks her skirts away from Cersei's grasp as though her daughter disgusts her. And in some ways, she does. "And you will do so in silence so that you might better contemplate your transgressions. Speak but a word and I promise you that you'll quickly learn that there are far less pleasant things in the world than a little plain sewing. _Go_."

Cersei does not cry, though her eyes are over-bright as she forces herself to curtsey to her mother. But the look she shoots her is so hateful, so venomous that Joanna almost shivers.

At the banquet that night, Joanna has ordered snake-meat grilled over a charcoal brazier, spiced with mustard, dragon peppers and a dash of venom, in honor of Loreza's visit. Other Dornish foods, that Kevan sniffs suspiciously at and Jaime makes a face at when he thinks she's not looking, grace the table as well - blood oranges and caramelized dates, grape-leaves stuffed with mincemeat and orange snap-peppers. And there is stranger fare from across the waters too – breaded scorpion, unborn lamb, jellied calves' brains and dog cooked with lemon and honey.

She does not submit her guests or her lord husband to the sour Dornish vintage of course. Instead at the high table they sip summerwine and spiced hippocrass from crystal flutes and toast to a prayer for a short winter.

When Princess Elia compliments the food and asks Cersei whether Dornish fare is strange or pleasing to her, Joanna cuts across. "My daughter is not to speak today," she says, "she is in contemplation for a small mischief."

Gerion laughs heartily. "Again, Cersei? Mercy, what have you done now?" He is fond of the twins and quick to tease them, to laugh at them or make them laugh. Cersei's face turns as red as her new silk gown as the others chuckle in amusement - even Jaime, who sticks out his tongue at her. _Good, _Joanna thinks. _A little laughter never hurt anyone. _And the gods know, Cersei needs to be reminded every now and then that she cannot be a little tyrant.

"Lady Cersei is spirited," Loreza says kindly. "Such fire, such charm will be much cherished and admired in Sunspear." Tywin frowns at her for letting slip the news - _women_, he will bluster later at night in the privacy of their bedchamber, _they can never keep their mouths shut. _And then, as a concession, _Except for you, my love. _But now that the cat's out of the bag, he sits back and resigns himself. Kevan and Gerion, who were neither informed nor consulted, gape at him - Kevan wounded at being left out, Gery bewildered.

Cersei drops her fork and opens her mouth. "Sun-sunspear, Your Highness?" she says, stuttering for the first time since she was out of her nursery smocks. Jaime grabs her hand and squeezes it so hard that Joanna fears he might snap his sister's bones.

Joanna does not reprimand her. "Yes, daughter," she says calmly, "you are to be fostered under Her Highness's care, until such a time that you reach an age to be wed. It was decided today." As an afterthought she adds, "Jaime, leave your sister's hand. No, Cersei, you may _not_ retire." Her daughter looks closer to bolting than retiring.

Prince Oberyn shoots his mother a look, but Loreza gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head. He is not to be betrothed to the Lannister girl and for that he rolls his eyes heavenwards and mimes a prayer of relief. _Impertinent brat_, Joanna thinks. Not at all to her taste or Tywin's.

"And we have decided to betroth our heir, Jaime, to Her Highness's daughter," Tywin says calmly, not to be left out when the announcements are being made. "Princess Elia, I bid you welcome to our family."

"I am honored beyond words, my lord," the Dornish girl murmurs, black eyes shadowed by her lashes. Her face gives nothing away, but then she is not a child like the twins. "I hope I am pleasing to you and my Lady Joanna." _You aren't, _Joanna thinks critically of the dark, delicate girl. _But you _are_ Loreza's daughter. You will have to do._

She kisses the girl's cheek, as a good-mother should and says, "In the fullness of time, it is our dearest wish that you and Cersei grow as close as sisters. For such you will be in name once Jaime grows to manhood. She will have much to learn from you when she leaves for Dorne with you. Dorne and... who knows where else?"

_We all know where, _Joanna thinks, exchanging a look with Loreza and Tywin. _King's Landing, that's where. _

* * *

_Sadly, the marriage between Aerys II Targaryen and his sister Rhaella was not as happy; though she turned a blind eye to most of the king's infidelities, the queen did not approve of his "turning my ladies into his whores." (Joanna Lannister was not the first lady to be dismissed abruptly from Her Grace's service, nor was she the last)._

**\- The World of Ice and Fire**

* * *

**278 AC**

**King's Landing**

At twelve, Cersei is scarce a handspan shorter than Joanna. _When last I saw you, you only came up to my shoulder. _If she were a fond and foolish mother, a weak woman who could look no further than her own whims (like Dorna, she thinks uncharitably), the thought would have made her sad.

She kneels to receive her mother's blessing, but her eyes dart about as though looking for someone else. _Jaime. _

"Your brother is well," Joanna says, to forestall the questions. She pulls her daughter up, kissing her cheeks and holding her an arm's length away, the better to see her. "We saw him at Crakehall before sailing for King's Landing, not a month ago. Shooting up like a string-bean." She smooths Cersei's hair. "My, how you've grown." Tyrion peeps out from behind his mother's skirts, a shy little stranger. "Won't you greet your little brother?"

Cersei does not stoop to his level, to cuddle and fuss over him as a more tender sister might. _I was tender at her age, _Joanna thinks. _I was never soft, but I was tender with my brother and little sisters. _"You brought me the wrong little brother, my lady mother." She flicks her skirts away from Tyrion and the little boy shrinks back, frightened.

Joanna sighs. "Come," she says. "We have so much to talk about." She lets Tyrion take her hand and slows her steps down to match his waddling little ones.

Cersei throws her a curious look. "You never held our hands and walked when we were little."

"I did, actually," Joanna says, "but less than I do with Tyrion, I acknowledge. You and Jaime had each other and a host of servants and little playmates, if you wanted them. This poor little one has only me." _A mother's love and a father's sufferance. Poor shields against a cruel world. _

In the Tower of the Hand, all her aunts want to meet her and pepper her with questions and compliments but Joanna shoos them off. "I wish you'd shoo the little imp away too," Cersei says, as she follows her mother to her bedchamber.

"Imp," Tyrion repeats. "Dwarf. Midget."

"Peace, Cersei, can you not leave the child alone for a minute?"

Cersei gasps when her mother opens the door and claps her hands to her mouth, just as Joanna expected she would. Gowns in silk and velvet, brocade and cloth-of-gold, Myrish lace and sheer Qartheen linen. Gowns the blue of the sea and the sky, gowns in frosty silver and pewter like stormclouds, gowns as green as glossy leaves and Yi Ti jade, gowns in scarlet and rose, wheat-gold like Cersei's hair and sable like Elia's. And there are more - cloaks and gloves and dancing slippers and jewels spilling out of caskets.

"Your trousseau," Joanna says as the girl gives a muffled shriek. "Fit for a queen."

Cersei turns to her. "So I am to be queen then?"

Joanna smiles at her, a conspiratorial smile from mother to daughter and for once, Cersei responds with warmth. It touches her. "Did you ever doubt it?"

"No," Cersei says, winding a rope of pearls around her throat and staring dreamily into her Myrish looking glass. "But I always thought, after you sent me to Dorne, that you were planning to marry me to Oberyn. And I never thought you'd-"

"Care?" Joanna raises an eyebrow. "Who else would I care for but my only daughter? No, don't look at poor Ty like that. I have been plotting and scheming for you for years, Cersei."

"So it is settled?" Cersei breathes.

"All but," Joanna says. "There was a time when the queen and I had our... differences but she has always admired your father and quite agreed that no more suitable bride could be found for her son."

"Your differences," Cersei repeats, amused. One elegant eyebrow arches mockingly and Joanna has to remind herself that her daughter is no longer a child, that she is flowering into a woman's body, a woman's power. _Girls are always cruel at this age, _she thinks, _and never more so than to their mothers. _

"Yes, our differences," Joanna says calmly. "You might have heard scurrilous stories at Dorne. You will hear much more at court." She folds her arms at her waist and stares her daughter down until Cersei drops her eyes. _I have stared down lions and madmen before. _"Someday, when you are older, I hope to tell you the true tale. For the nonce, I expect you to treat such slanders against your lady mother with the respect it deserves."

"Yes, mother." Cersei chews on her lip and then looks up. "And what of the king? What does he have to say about my betrothal?"

"The king is amiable for now - though who can tell what moods might possess a madman? But it is for _you_ to charm Prince Rhaegar once you meet. His father is not so set on the match as we might hope for, and if the son is not best pleased all our work will be for naught."

Cersei tosses back the rope of her golden hair back and laughs. "I was reared in Dorne, lady mother," she says haughtily, "trust me, there is nothing left that I do not know about charming a man."

_Except humility perhaps, _Joanna thinks. _You'd be surprised how many men like a woman they can grind under their spurs. _But she lets it go. This is her daughter's day, this is Cersei's golden hour. "I know," she says, holding her daughter and kissing her forehead. "I always knew you would make us proud, my love."

It would be a touching moment, but for the fact that Cersei has to disentangle herself and shriek, "Mother, he's touching my gown! Make him _stop_!"

That night, Joanna dresses her daughter herself - in a gown of snowy Myrish lace, with the dagged sleeves lined in gold satin. Pearls and emeralds star her throat and hair and Joanna wipes her eyes when she is done, unaccustomedly maudlin.

"You look as pure as the Maid herself," she sniffs. "I was sent to court as one of Rhaella's ladies-in-waiting when Jaehaerys came to the throne. I was older than you but I had just the one good silk gown. But it was green and it showed my figure off to advantage - Aerys could scarce take his eyes off me all night." She squeezes Cersei's hand. "You'll do even better."

"I know," Cersei says, unmoved.

She sings, she dances, she laughs. No one can take their eyes off her that night. She is beautiful, but more than that she is young and fresh and joyous, a breath of air and light in a staid court that has not known how to play and make merry for years. Next to dull, dark Elia she is at her glittering best - all the faults and flaws that Joanna remembers smoothed over under a coat of varnish. _Surely more than a veneer? _Joanna thinks. _She has grown so much in four years. Surely she is not the child she used to be. _

"Joanna." The Queen leans heavily on her son's arm. She wears a gown the color of hoarfrost and looks like death warmed over.

"Your Grace." Joanna curtseys deeply. "I hope you are well." Seized by a fit of piety, Aerys has decided that he will lie with none but his wife. Rumor has it that now Rhaella has her servants scour the countryside for a maid lovely enough to lure her husband from her bed.

"I am and I thank you for your concern." Rhaella studies her and then without a trace of irony adds, "We do not see as much of you as court as we would have wished. It must grieve your lord husband to be separated so long from you."

_I do not approve of my brother turning my ladies into whores. _Joanna forces a smile though the words smart and she can just imagine how they will laugh at her in the morning, at how the Queen shamed the proud Lady of the Rock. "I hope I shall have more occasions to visit the court in future, Your Grace."

"Perhaps." The Queen flicks her fingers dismissively at her. It is not an overture - they will never be as they were in their girlhood, not with all the weight of their sad history between them - but it is not a dismissal, either.

Prince Rhaegar lingers after his mother passes by. "Your daughter shines with joy, my lady," he tells Joanna.

"She is very young, Your Highness," Joanna says. "She has every reason in the world to be joyful."

"Such purity and innocence is rare," he acknowledges. "It is to be cherished and preserved."

"I hope it will be," Joanna says and a smile passes between them.

"His Highness likes Cersei very well," Elia says when the prince passes by. She watches him take a seat by Cersei and ply the harp in his lap with gentle fingers. "I look forward to happy news soon."

"There will be a wedding before the year is out, gods willing," Joanna says piously. "And then, good daughter, you will come with me to the Rock to meet your betrothed." Jaime is too young to be wed now, that must wait for manhood and his sixteenth year but it is past time Elia learned the ways of the westerlands. "And now Elia, you must tell me all about Cersei and the woman she has become, and I will tell what I can of Jaime."

Elia smiles, but guardedly. "Why, what is there to tell of Cersei, my lady? She is beautiful beyond word, charming and spirited. She is perfect."

* * *

_Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the __champion's crown. Ned remembered the moment when al the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife._

**\- A Game of Thrones**

* * *

**281 AC**

**Harrenhal**

_How did it all come to this? _She asks herself, sinking wearily to the bed and running her hands over the braided gold of Cersei's circlet. She would gladly rest her aching head on a soft pillow, burrow her body under an eiderdown quilt and Tywin's sheltering arms... but a mother can never sleep while her child weeps.

"I will have her head," Cersei whispers. Her knuckles are battered and bloody. Petals and broken pottery are scattered over the Myrish carpets. "I will have her heart on a skewer and her eyes pecked out by ravens and I will burn her whore's cunt."

"You will," Joanna says soothingly, gathering her daughter's hair and plaiting it. "I will see to it myself, if you wish. But for now you must rest and calm yourself for the sake of your babe." _She's fifteen, _she thinks, furious at the almost farcical turn her daughter's life has taken, furious that she cannot protect her little girl from the malice of a vengeful world. _A princess. A mother-to-be. When I was fifteen I had nothing and no one and yet I was radiant. _

Cersei leans up on one elbow, her eyes burning like embers. "Mother," she hisses, "if I could shake Rhaegar's brat free of my womb now, I would."

"Cersei please-"

"Don't worry," she says bitterly, "I am seven months gone. I'm not such a fool as to kill myself to spite him. But he _will_ pay for this."

"You will," Joanna agrees and repeats, "I will see to it myself, if you wish." _On your wedding day, you fed each other by the hand, _she thinks sadly, _you were so deeply in love and everyone said how beautiful, how perfect you two looked together. Gold and silver. Tywin wept tears of joy. _"Cersei, what went wrong? You were so happy on your wedding day but now... you shrink from one another and you have not told me a word. Does he have other women? I have heard of no such thing but-"

"He has never had other women," her daughter snaps. "Dreams and dusty scrolls were enough for him, or so I thought till now." She lets her mother hold a cup of wine to her lips and drinks greedily. "What went wrong, you will want to know. I can scarcely tell, myself. In the first year we were so happy... but then things changed. I cannot tell how but he began to treat me as though I were poison to him, as though I disgusted him. Now it is duty not desire that takes him to my bed - when he comes at all. He would rather moon away at Summerhall with Dayne or Connington and at first I thought that he would rather have a man-"

"_Cersei_-"

"–but no matter. I was wrong. When the maester told me I was with child, three years after our marriage, I could hardly believe it myself. Why _her_, mother? I am a hundred times more beautiful. It was my crown, the one she stole from me today. _Mine_."

"All crowns are yours, Cersei," Joanna says. "As for the Stark girl, mayhap she pleases Rhaegar in some perverse northern fashion. She looks innocent enough, I grant you, but she might be a little savage underneath. Past time she was wed to the Baratheon boy." She strokes Cersei's face. "Do not trouble yourself, daughter. Be yourself and Rhaegar will come back to you." _If the gods are kind. _"As for the rest, leave it all to me. Sleep now."

As she rises, Cersei says in a thin voice, "Mother, will you send Jaime to me? Please. I need him."

_They were children then, _Joanna thinks. _Children playing. Surely there is no harm now. _"Of course, my love. I hope he will give you some comfort." She does not need to send a page for Jaime - he is already waiting outside his sister's door, burning a trail through the rushes with his feet. So is Tyrion.

"I brought a blancmange for her from the kitchens," the eight-year-old boy says awkwardly, "and some tea from Elia."

"It will be good for her throat," Joanna agrees. "Talk her to sleep if you can, Jaime."

"Will Cersei be alright?" Ty asks anxiously. He thinks the world of the sister who still treats him like a flea-ridden cur and that saddens Joanna at times. Poor, pure-hearted little imp, he deserves better. "I wish I was a knight like Jaime, I'd teach Prince Rhaegar a lesson or two-"

"Hush, child. It is our duty to tend to Cersei but you _cannot_ say such things of the crown prince," she says gently. "Come Tyrion, it has been a long day for all of us. Perhaps you might write a song for your sister. You know how they please her."

"I'll write a song for her," Ty says mildly. "It'll make her very happy, you'll see. It'll be about Prince Rhaegar. And his northern cunt."

Joanna rubs her temples, but she does not bother to correct his language. He is still only a little boy but he will have heard worse from the guards in the barracks and his brother. _A thorn by any other name..._

"Write it then. Perhaps it might shame him into remembering that his wife's shame is his as well."

* * *

_If Aerys had agreed to marry her to Rhaegar, __how many deaths might have been avoided? Cersei could have given the prince the sons he wanted, lions with purple eyes and silver manes... __and with such a wife, Rhaegar might never have looked twice at Lyanna Stark. The northern girl had a wild beauty, as he recalled, though __however bright a torch might burn it could never match the rising sun._

**_\- _A Dance with Dragons  
**

* * *

**282 AL**

**King's Landing**

"Your Highness."

She sinks gracefully to her knees before the new princess. Lyanna Stark offers her a cool hand to kiss and Joanna thinks she looks like a small brown dormouse next to her husband and sister-wife. Where Cersei is tall and shapely and glowing, the Stark girl is short and skinny as a lathe. _Dark and light. _

Targaryens had taken more than one wife before, the High Septon had argued. So had the gods, who wed brother to sister. Who were they to judge the ways of gods and dragonlords? _But you have no dragons, my lord, _Joanna thinks, accepting the kiss of peace from Rhaegar. _And the filly you purchased at such grievous cost might soon prove barren. _

Under her loose-flowing gown of purple silk, Joanna can faintly see the curve of Lyanna's belly. She steps aside with Tywin, his jaw gritted so hard she fears it will snap. Robert Baratheon bounces little Princess Rhaenys on his lap, face bland. In place of a shamed harlot, his cousin has given him his eldest daughter to bride, when she flowers. A good bargain. Her granddaughter is so pretty too, with silvery-gold hair and purple eyes.

_Young Robert __is good with children, _Joanna thinks. Rumor has it that he has a bastard in the Vale. The Starks are lined up against the wall, their faces a study in contrasts. Lord Rickard glows, Brandon glowers and the younger two sons are plainly bewildered.

"I will not be shamed any longer-" Tywin hisses once they are outside in the gardens. Servants offer them dainties - slivers of baked apple and pears-in-brandy, stuffed mushrooms, smoked salmon and tart wines.

"Peace, husband," she says. "She will never wear the name of queen. We were assured that that is to be Cersei's alone."

"The name matters not if the Stark girl has him by the breeches," Tywin growls. "And I have no faith in him anymore. When he was a boy I had thought- but it matters not. There is nothing to differentiate the father from the son now."

"Charm and madness in equal measure." She sighs. "The older we are, the more foolish all our old hopes seem."

"Hope is a chancy mistress. I prefer to believe in certainties." He curls his lip. "I have given Aerys my chain, there is nothing left for me in King's Landing. I had expected Cersei would be wiser-"

"It is not her fault. That is Rhaegar's alone."

"She must have done something wrong," he persists. _Just like a man_, Joanna thinks irritably. "She gave him a girl-"

"Rhaegar crowned the Stark girl with roses two months before Cersei gave birth," Joanna reminds him, frustrated.

"She did not please him for years before that," Tywin says curtly. "She must have done something wrong, Joanna. What was it? Was she too lewd, in the Dornish manner? Was she sharp and shrewish, as was her wont? Was it her slowness to breed? What _was_ it?"

"Her only sin was being a woman," Joanna snaps. "A woman at a madman's whim." And the words remind her so much of herself at Cersei's age that suddenly she cannot stand to be too close to Tywin. Abruptly she curtseys to him. "I beg your leave, my lord. I must see to my daughter."

She threads her way to Cersei's chamber, where she has already retired without her attendants. Small wonder that she would want to withdraw from the humiliation of the ordeal where Lyanna Stark was introduced as a princess to the lords of the realm and consecrated by holy oils. _I tried to teach you modesty when you were a little maid, but I never dreamed that such a day would come to you, my poor child. _

Cersei sits on her bed with Jaime's arm around her, her crown in her lap and her hair unbound, and looks up dully when her mother enters. Joanna does not bother to ask them why they are alone. They are past impropriety now.

"Wait outside," she tells Jaime. "I have something for Cersei." Jaime opens his mouth, no doubt to argue, but she snaps, "This is women's lore. You will best serve your sister by keeping out of it."

She waits till he is gone before pulling the pouch out from her petticoats. "I had them off an old woman from the East. I met her first when I was trying to conceive," she says. "It had been seven years since I'd been with child, after you two and I feared that I would never have another."

"And you bore a little monster," Cersei says sweetly. "A hideous humpbacked little dwarf."

"Cersei, was it your tongue that cut away your love?" She tugs at the drawstrings and holds up the powdered herbs to light. "Mix this into the girl's wine and I promise you she will never quicken again."

Cersei sniffs at them curiously. "Well at the very least I know she's bound to birth a beastling," she says bitterly, "may she die of it." Joanna winces. _I almost did. _She smiles faintly at her mother. "When her bastard rots in her womb, I can tell Rhaegar that I have quickened with our second. Mother, I am with child again. Tell father that I pray that this one will be a son, a lion cub with a golden mane and emerald eyes."

* * *

_Lady Nym's arrival had preceded theirs by some hours, and no doubt she had warned the guards of their coming, for the Threefold Gate was __open when they reached it. Only here were the gates lined up one behind the other to al ow visitors to pass beneath al three of the Winding Walls __directly to the Old Palace, without first making their way through miles of narrow alleys, hidden courts, and noisy bazaars._

**\- A Feast for Crows**

* * *

**284 AL**

**Sunspear**

The bride wears blossoms of beaten silver in her hair, the young groom a golden tunic embroidered by his sister's loving hands. They put on a gallant show and the rabble at the Threefold Gate are appeased by all that glitter. _Well I have seen dourer couples, _Joanna thinks as Elia laces her fingers through Jaime's and proceeds in stately fashion across the courtyard. _Aerys and Rhaella for a start. _

She had closeted herself with Cersei at King's Landing, informing her very precisely of what she could and could not say at her brother's wedding. But she need not have troubled herself - Cersei seems happier than she has seen her in years, scattering largesse and showing off her baby. Little Prince Aegon, heir to the throne.

"It was good of you and Lord Tywin to consent to have the ceremony held in Dorne," Prince Doran says softly, coming up behind her while she watches the guests feasting and frolicking in the gardens.

"A bride should be married in her own home," Joanna says with a smile. "We would not have it any other way. Your mother was a very dear friend. She will be greatly missed."

"I hope to live up to her legacy."

"You already are," Joanna says. The Prince of Dorne is no green boy, he has children of his own and a stolid steadiness that is more comfort than she can say, in these uncertain times. The children flit and flutter through the garden like butterflies - Doran's girl and boy and Oberyn's bastards. Soon Aegon will be old enough to toddle behind his sister and that makes her happier than she can say. "My lord husband and I look forward to years of profit and amity between Dorne and the Rock."

He raises his cup to her and making her excuses, she goes to find her husband. "Will you not dance with me?" she teases Tywin, though she knows the answer.

His lips curl faintly at the corners, not quite a smile but close. "You know I never do, Joanna." She slips her arm through his. If they were alone, he would have leaned against her, resting some of his weight on her. But not in public of course, that would never do.

"A wedding is such a magical place, isn't it?" she muses, quite ready to submit herself to the mood of the day. The hot Dornish air seems to make it so much easier to relax, for her at least if not him. "Do you remember Cersei's?"

He nods absently, but he is hardly listening, intent on his own thoughts. "A pity our Princess Lyanna had to miss this one," he says smoothly. "It might have reminded her of happier times."

"A pity, but then a miscarriage is always hard on a woman. If not in body, then certainly in soul," Joanna says mildly. "Luckily she has Queen Rhaella to console her through this afflicting time. And in the meanwhile, Cersei and the prince seem to be enjoying themselves."

They are dancing in fact and a moment later she glides through the crowd to remind her son that he might care to do the same with his bride. "Elia loves to dance, don't you sweetling?" she says, putting one arm around the young woman and the other round the boy. Jaime gives her a look that says, _And so? _Her fingers tingle to smack his sulky face and she thinks dreamily of the child-sized fetters back in the Rock's dungeons where she ought to have spent some time consigning the twins. _You can drag a horse to water but you can't make him drink, I suppose. _

"There is no need for Jaime to trouble himself, my lady mother," Elia says sweetly. "I am sure Oberyn will come to claim me at any moment."

_Well she can dance with her brother then, _Joanna thinks, relieved. _If not the bridegroom, a brother is almost as good. _"Your tact is a treasure, good-daughter," she says, kissing the girl's cheek. "No, forgive me, you are a treasure."

"So I remind her whenever I see her," Prince Oberyn says, bearing down on them. "So I hope I need not remind _you_, good-brother," he says to Jaime with a smile. _A viper's smile, _Joanna thinks suddenly and now she sees the sense in the name all of Dorne has given him, where once she had only thought it brazen and vain for a chit of a boy.

"I am sure you will have no cause," she says smoothly, resting her hand on Jaime's shoulder. "Not so long as I am his mother."

Cersei's good mood persists into the following morning and Joanna wonders whether she has managed to lure Rhaegar to her bed again. _Duty can sire a son as well as desire, _she thinks. And Rhaegar is nothing but earnest in his desire to give both his wives their due.

"Elia will prove herself quite capable when the time comes for her to take up her duties as chatelaine," Joanna remarks to her as they wait outside the bridal chamber to wake the newlyweds and collect the wedding sheet. "She grows daily in my estimation."

"I'm sure," Cersei says, not troubling to hide her yawn.

"Did you not sleep well last night?" Joanna inquires delicately.

Cersei's eyes gleam. "Not a wink. After I handed Elia the cup with the wedding wine last night I went straight to bed... but I never slept at all, mother."

The tiring-women step out with a basket and Joanna steps forward to take out the sheet. She shakes it out expectantly and then stares at it, bewildered at first and then disappointed. Cersei peers at it over her shoulder. "Oh how very odd," she murmurs, flicking at the snowy, unblemished linen with her fingers, "they must have slept sound as babes all night."

* * *

**285 AL**

**Casterly Rock**

Her sons were dreamers born. Jaime had but one, Tyrion a thousand.

Some days, he will tell her that he means to take the cloth, that he will be High Septon. "Does the thought of a gold and crystal crown tempt you?" she asks. "I have been told it adds a foot to a man's height."

Other days, it is a chain that he dreams of. Maesters have no need for wives, they are wed to knowledge and all the wisdom of the world is theirs. "If its a wife you fear, why stop at the Citadel? As a personal favor, your lord father would be happy to have you gelded and send to the Wall," she points out. "There is some small honor in the black knights for a Lannister, none at all in wearing a collar."

When he was a child in the nursery, he would dream of dragons and once had even asked his uncle for a hatchling as a name-day present. She did not doubt that he still dreamed of adventure - all boys did at that age - that in his mind's eye he saw himself tall and straight-limbed on dragon-back or abroad a ship set for distant isles.

Today he tells her that he wants to be a singer. "By all means," she says, "I have always wondered about the banshees they say lurk in the forests of Yi Ti. You are kind to wish to show your mother a live performance."

He laughs, he never takes her words to heart and she ruffles his hair. "The sound might be sour but the words will be sweet," he assures her. "Love songs. Even Cersei likes my songs, Mother, and you know how easily pleased she is."

Even Elia smiles at that. "Are you in love then, Tyrion?" she teases him. It is good to see her smile and jape, she has been very wan of late. _The poor girl is wasting away, _Joanna thinks and she feels not a little guilty. _Jaime shows her no kindness, if he ever speaks to her in a voice not dripping with scorn I have never heard it. And Tywin is restless for a grandson. _

He blushes and tries to cover it up awkwardly. "Spring is a good season to fall in love."

"And is she very pretty?" Elia asks. "Does she have blue eyes? You must write a song to them, there is much grace in the way you frame words. I know many a maid would be enraptured."

"She would be if she kept her eyes shut," Tyrion says waspishly and Elia's smile falters.

_There is no place for a mouse in the lion's den, _Joanna thinks. "Tyrion, don't speak so to your good sister," Joanna intones, out of a sense of duty. "She meant no harm." She should feel pity but now she only feels irritation at the girl - why must she be constantly defending Elia from the rest of the family? _A spine is what you should have grown years ago. That and tits. _

"Tyrion you are entirely too young to be falling in love and making eyes at milkmaids," she tells her son sourly. "Or charwomen. Or whatever it is."

"Love inspires me, Mother. If I have no object for my wayward affections, I shall be desolate."

"Desolate but in your father's good graces. It will be years before we find a wife for you and I would rather that your... wayward affections were not the cause of any embarrassment to us."

"Pray do not sleep uneasily on my account then. I cast the net of my love wide but sadly, I have yet to find a fish foolish enough to be caught."

The need for further conversation is prevented when Jaime strides into the room, swinging two wooden practice swords like a juggler. Still a boy, she thinks affectionately.

"Mother," he says and bends to kiss her cheek. He bows coldly to his wife and then scoops up Tyrion, laughing when his little brother punches his shoulder playfully. "High time I found the rascal. He scuttled away like a crab when I tried to catch him." It warms her heart to see them so close. _If only Cersei loved Tyrion as Jaime does, I would be at peace. I would know that I had done right by my children then, that they would always be strong for each other. _But it is not to be, she has already accepted the truth of it sadly. Cersei has always had a hot temper and a cold heart.

"It is good to see you playing," Elia ventures mildly.

"Training, my lady," Jaime says curtly. He cuts her off mid-sentence with another crisp bow and marches out of the room, his brother perched on his shoulders. _Jaime has but one dream, _his mother thinks, _and Tyrion will sooner have his dragons than Jaime will have Cersei sitting in Elia's place, with their sons in their arms. _

Elia gives her good mother a sad look. "It is hard," she begins softly. "It is hard-"

"Yes," Joanna agrees, sinking her needle savagely into a square of silk. This is not her quarrel and she will not be drawn into it by a skinny girl, still terrified of her own shadow. "It is always hard when a wife is not the mother of sons. It poisons her husband's love for her and his family's goodwill and really, who can blame them?"

* * *

**286 AL**

**Casterly Rock**

"I should have drowned him at birth," Tywin remarks. There is no particular rancor in his voice, only resignation.

Joanna glances up from her sewing. In times of trouble she likes to take out her darning, to keep her fingers busy. Better mending socks and patching hems than tearing out her hair or her errant sons' throats. "Would you have?" she asks. "If I had-" she hesitates. They never speak of it. Even after thirteen years the memory of that long night and what might have been torments him and terrifies her. "If I had not lived," she finishes softly.

"Oh don't be a fool, wife," he grunts, clearly not in the mood for sentimental riffraff. "Tempting as it might have been, I'd find myself left with only one son then."

"You could have found yourself another a wife."

He raises an eyebrow at that and she rises and puts her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his back. "I love you," she whispers, touched in spite of herself. He permits it for a moment before shifting away from her, clearly uncomfortable with caresses in broad daylight.

"I suppose this is a ploy," he says sourly. "To soften me towards the boy."

"As if that could ever work on you," she scoffs. "No, my lord, I know only too well how hard and unshakeable you can be when you put your mind to it." She tugs at a fraying thread on his cuff, thinking it time that the tunic was replaced. _I have just the right pale green put away, _she thinks, distracted for a moment. Flecked with gold, to match his eyes.

"I've kept him in the lowest level of the cells," he reminds her.

"Moldy bread and bog water never killed a man in a day," she says, unruffled. "It will not kill Tyrion, not with his constitution. And the sight of a red-hot poker gleaming in the dark can do marvelous things to a man's resolve." _Even one as pig-headed as my boy. _

"You are a heartless mother, my love." He tries to sound grave, but there is too much approval in his voice.

"If I'd been the same with Jaime when he was Tyrion's age I'd have less trouble in my household," she says dryly. "Jaime's scuffles with Elia leave me at my wit's end."

"And I suppose you won't tell me where you've kept the girl?"

_Tysha, m'lady, my name is Tysha. _She had eyes like black currants and it was easy to see why Ty thought he was in love."No," she says mildly. "I could not in good conscience, my lord."

"Some would say your good conscience was a slippery thing, my lady." He is teasing her now and she relaxes. The girl is as safe as she can make her, if Tywin were in earnest he would root her out with fire and sword and nothing his wife might say, on her knees or clinging to his feet, would move him. But the news of Prince Jaehaerys's birth, their second grandson, has put him in an unusually good humor and for now he is content to let her see to the situation with Tyrion.

"We mothers can be slippery things where our children's best interests are concerned."

"You truly think that _creature_ is in his best interests?"

"Peace, Tywin," she says. "Years ago, there was no lack of naysayers when you took me to wife, who told you you'd be better off with the Lefford heiress or one of the Serrett sisters or-"

"So you want our son to marry a crofter's daughter," Tywin says flatly. "If she _is_ a crofter's daughter after all and not just another lucky whore." He raps on the table with his knuckles, restless, and Joanna knows that he is thinking of his father and the chandler's daughter.

Joanna flushes. "I said no such thing. But a little kindness, a little gentleness never went amiss. And Ty, poor boy, has had little in his life. Leave me to tend to this and I promise you that you will have no cause for displeasure. I ruled the westerlands in your stead for years, husband. Can you not trust me this once with our son?"

He sighs and presses her palm to his lips, curling her fingers over his kiss. Her wedding ring glitters on her heart-finger, the gold as brilliant as it was on the day when he first knelt to her in the sand. There is but a single word inscribed on it, the glyphs in High Valyrian. _Always. _"I yield to your better judgment then, my love," he says. "With a few reservations."

"A few." She smiles up at him and he shrugs helplessly as though to say, _oh well, what can you expect? _Tywin emerged from his mother's womb with reservations about the world.

The next day, she orders Tyrion brought up to her solar from the black cells. He squints in the bright sunlight, rubbing at his manacled hands. It pains her to see him like this but Tywin is watching from behind the curtains and he will never forgive her if he thinks her too weak and yielding. The girl sits on a footstool at her feet, stitching spring flowers on a pillowcase.

"Tysha!" He shambles towards them but is brought short by the length of the chains around his ankles.

The girl quivers like a leaf but bidden to be deaf and dumb for the interview, she never so much as looks up. Her stitches are mousy-thin and fine, in her rose-colored silk she could pass for a lord's maiden daughter. _And a very pretty one at that. _

"Won't you greet your mother, Tyrion?"

Tyrion reluctantly tears his eyes away from the girl and gives her an awkward bow. "I bid you good day, my lady mother," he grits out and then with a savage smile, "I would step closer but I fear the smell might render you faint."

"Certainly the rank odor of the dungeons is not one a lady might care for a closer acquaintance with," Joanna agrees. "I rather think Tysha would agree with me if she could speak."

Tyrion's eyes look ready to pop out of their sockets. "You've had her tongue cut out!"

"Oh don't be so dramatic," Joanna says, rolling her eyes. "Do you take me for a savage? I have always found that a few choice, sweet words work wonders that awls and pincers never can."

"You might care to tell my lord father that. Could save ourselves a few dragons that way."

"Forgive me, I meant to say a _woman's _words. A man has his sword and no need of words."

"Women and half-men have words, is that what you mean to say, lady mother?"

She looks at her boy, her last baby with his black and green eyes burning with so much bitterness, so much hate. _You are so much more than you know, my love, _she thinks_, so much more than a half-man. _She wishes she could fold him in her arms, keep him close forever. Hide him, not for shame, but for a love so fierce that sometimes it hurts. _If I could have given up my life to have you born straight and whole and strong like your brother, to spare you all that pain, I would and gladly, _she thinks. _But I could not and I have tried to make amends for it all your life. I can only hope they are enough. _

She can almost see the paths set in stone before her – Tyrion's life if she were to give his first sweet summer love to Tywin and if she did not. The choice is hers and hard as men call her, there can be no doubt of which is the right one. If one of her wards had brought back a whore and claimed she was his bride, she would have tossed both the newlyweds in the dungeons to rot without a second thought. But not her poor son. Not his poor little love.

"You were never married," she says calmly, "you are only three-and-ten, too young to be wed without your father's consent. Tysha," she says, resting her hand on the girl's glossy dark hair, "seems a sweet child though. I have a mind to keep her in my chambers as a maid-in-waiting or perhaps as a bedmaid for one of your aunts." She looks at him coolly. "If, when you the age of manhood, your lord father believes you to be of suitable diligence and competence, I might suggest to him that you be given greater responsibilities at Lannisport. I am sure Tysha might have family to take her in at Lannisport. Such a big, bustling city after all. So easy to lose oneself in."

Tyrion's eyes widen as his mind registers the import of her words. "Mother," he says in a strangled voice.

She waves him to silence. "Remember I said _if_," she says tartly. "And with your father's approval at that."

But he is not listening, of course he is not. He is already dreaming of a manse in Lannisport, of his dark-haired beauty swathed in silks and jewels, of a baby perhaps. Three years. Three short years. He falls to his knees before her, looking ready to kiss the hem of her gown or weep and cut a caper.

_Oh well, let him dream, _Joanna thinks and bites her lips to keep sharp words from slipping out. Cersei would not have bitten back, but then she is not her daughter, is she? _When I was his age I dreamed of being the Lady of the Rock. _

"I won't fail you_, _Mother," he says hoarsely. "I swear to it."

"I should hope not," she says, steepling her fingers together. She is the Lady of the Rock once more, not a doting mother, and she lets the frost creep back into her voice to remind him of who he is dealing with, of who might be listening and with what intent. "I rather think that would not bode very well for Tysha."

* * *

**290 AL**

**Casterly Rock  
**

Her hand flashes out and Jaime reels back under the force of the blow. Even Tywin looks surprised - she has never struck any of their children before. There had never been any need, not when a well-placed word worked so much better.

"How dare you shame your lady wife so?" Joanna hisses, palm red and tingling and poised ready to strike again. With an effort, she masters herself. This is not a time to yield to her temper. "How dare you shame us so?"

If a man had struck him, even his own father, Jaime would have hit back - or more likely, drawn a sword. But he only gapes at his mother, one hand halfway to his cheek. Cersei speaks up for him, one arm curled protectively around his back. "It was the Viper who began it," she spits out. "No man who _was_ a man would have taken such an insult lying down. If you would have a scapegoat, madam, I suggest you start with him and his precious sister."

Joanna is not so foolish as to turn a hand on her daughter, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. No matter how badly she wants to, she would not put it past Cersei to hand her over to the white knights at the door. Instead, she folds herself into the armchair beside Tywin, clenching her hands in her lap to keep them still. "Swords were drawn under this roof tonight," she says, "blood spilled over bread and salt that our guests partook of."

"And the boar," Tyrion murmurs, "pray don't forget the boar."

"Oh mother," Cersei says, with a toss of her golden hair, "no one _died_. For all Oberyn's mewling, he'll have but a few scratches to show on the morrow." She smirks at her twin, as though it is all a game to her, and he has the audacity to wink back at her.

"Betrothals and fosterings were to be spoken of tonight," Joanna says flatly. "And what did we have the pleasure to witness? Brawls and fisticuffs." She rises with dignity. "Jaime, I leave you to your lord father's discretion. Cersei, Tyrion, come." When the girl purses her lips mulishly, she hisses, "_Now._" They have been grown for years but something in her tone makes them listen and they follow her out of the study with only a minimum of snicker-snackering.

"Cersei, I want you gone by tomorrow," she tells her daughter flatly, after shutting the door on Tywin and Jaime. "You and the children."

"I am the Queen-" the girl, who has never fully grown into a woman, begins.

"-and I am the Lady of the Rock and you are a guest under my roof," she says, her voice like ice. "You may choose to leave with grace, but you _will_ leave by sunset." She waits before her daughter storms off before sagging against the stone wall and rubbing her temples.

"Mother?" Ty tugs at her gown, concern on his face.

"You should go home as well," she sighs. "Your paramour and your daughter will be glad to see you back so soon." Tysha and Lanna. She must remember to send him with the bolt of ruby brocade she had purchased for the little girl - enough for a new gown and scraps left over for a dress for her doll. Oh what she would not give now for the uncomplicated comfort of a manse in Lannisport, the colorless contentment of a simple hearth, a little home.

"I ought to see Prince Oberyn and say my piece to him, poor as it is." Tyrion's lips quirk in amusement. "I might only be a halfman but I have always tried to compensate by being doubly good with words."

"That would be a start," Joanna acknowledges. "It was good of you to think of it."

"Thinking is what I do, lady mother."

She bends and kisses his brow. "Then you are the only one of my children to do so, sweetling." She finds Elia in her nightgown, sitting on her bed and unbinding her plaited hair. She looks tiny, like a little girl in the middle of that great white bed where more often than not, she sleeps alone.

"Lady mother, do come in."

She had come in ready to fuss over the girl - pour her wine, brush her hair, ask her if she needed anything, that sort of thing. But now she pauses awkwardly in the doorway, caught unawares and shamed somehow by Elia's serenity. She looks like she does every night and every day, placid, unruffled and in a world of her own. It irritates her more than she could say. A storm of tears, a hailstorm of hairbrushes - that she is used to from years of dealing with Cersei. That she can handle. But _this_, to act as though nothing is amiss, is almost an insult.

"I came to see if you needed anything, good daughter. It has been a trying day for all of us, but you most of all."

"No, nothing out of the usual," Elia murmurs, rubbing some scented lotion on her hands. It smells of oranges and Joanna supposes that Oberyn has brought it for her from Dorne.

"But your brother-"

"Oberyn is always getting into scuffles." Elia shrugs. "I will see him in the morning and we shall laugh over this... misunderstanding." It is a dismissal but Joanna lingers in the doorway.

"Jaime has always been wild and willful," she says, smoothing her hands nervously over her gown. "I hope you will not hold this against him." And unable to stop herself, worn out by the day and Elia's chilly indifference she forgets herself and bursts out, "But then your brother had no cause to speak of him as he did so-"

Elia's black eyes flash for a moment but then she looks down and Joanna thinks she must have imagined it. _She is the sweetest and most pliant of creatures. _"Of course I will never hold it against him," she says softly. "He is my lord husband and I wish only for his welfare."

* * *

**292 AL**

**King's Landing**

"Powdered herbs, my arse," Cersei hisses as she slips into her gown. This is a matron's gown in a murky dark hue, high-necked and unornamented - not at all in the fashions she prefer. But it will court favor with her judges. "We should have slipped poison in her soup when we had the chance." Her veil of fluted cloth-of-gold covers her braided hair and throat and over it she wears Naerys' crown, a heavy thing of red gold with gemstone-eyed dragons for the seven points. "I gave Rhaegar three children and she gave him grief and a womb filled with rot and pus. She is eaten up with her own spite."

_But he loves her for all that, _Joanna thinks. Her gown is scarlet and gold, the colors of House Lannister. "She would never have dared make such accusations if she had not some proof-"

"Her bitterness is all the proof she needs. The milk madness of a barren woman." Cersei stacks golden rings on her fingers and her words rattle, too sharp and quick.

_Oh daughter, _Joanna thinks. _Did you think me a fool? You should have told me. I would have helped. I would have done something. _But she bites her lips on the harsh words. Done is done and now her duty is to her daughter - and her son as well. "Or perhaps the northern herbs she gathers to lure Rhaegar to her bed," she suggests.

"Yes, that's a good one."

Joanna grabs her hand. "Stop pacing," she says, her voice like frost, steadying her daughter. "You are queen and she is but a savage little whore. They all know her shameful story. Why should they listen to her at all?"

"Because they _love_ her," Cersei sneers. "Everyone loves her - scattering gold all over Fleabottom, riding up and down the city in her open chariot, parading herself like a common harlot. Ugh."

"But they fear you," Joanna tells her. _Or your father at any rate. _"You do not need their love, Cersei. And," she adds carefully, "it is not so strange that your sons take after you... and Jaime. Your daughter is Rhaegar's, tis plain to see. But from now on, you must not see your brother alone, not without a chaperone. Do you agree?"

Cersei nods eagerly, she will agree to anything now. _Oh my daughter, _Joanna thinks sadly, _why are you so slow to learn wisdom, so quick to throw away all the gifts the gods have given you? For what? Spite? Folly? Madness? _"Tyrion has been working for you," she says, "yes, the brother you despise."

"What, the whoremaster?" Cersei asks, face twisting. "I do not need his help. Has he been serving me in the winesinks and pits of the city?"

"Strange to say he has," Joanna says serenely. "Spreading stories and songs among the low folk. You and your father would say that is what he does best but then sometimes I think neither of you have the sense the gods should have given you."

"Is his little concubine spreading her legs to spread the stories quicker?" Cersei asks sweetly.

"She is dearly loved by your brother, who wishes nothing but good for you," Joanna says. "He has served you better than Jaime, I would say. At least he has never dragged your name through the mud. And Tysha is the mother of your niece, whether you like it or not."

"The mother of a bastard," Cersei sniffs.

"Some," Joanna says sweetly, "would call you that as well. The mother of two bastards. Traitor, adulteress, they would say you should hang from your heels at the city gates with your flesh stripped away and your brats impaled on pikes next to you. You were always a spoiled girl, Cersei, and you have grown into a stupid woman. I would rather have borne a dozen dwarfs than be saddled now with with _you_."

And for the first time in her life, she slams the door behind her. Tywin is waiting for her in the antechamber, his face frozen into a hard mask. He raises an eyebrow when she enters the room.

"If she were not my daughter," Joanna says shortly, "I would gladly see her hang." She pours herself a measure of wine. "I hope you have kept Jaime close under watch. Did you find Elia?"

Tywin shrugs. He has no interest in his son's barren wife, as he has already called her to her face. "Is it true-" he begins abruptly, as though unable to restrain himself any longer.

"Oh husband," she says irritably, "how much longer will you fool yourself? Of course those children were Jaime's." _Well the boys at least. Rhaenys was conceived when Cersei still had faith in Rhaegar. _

"Did you always know?"

"Of course I didn't. I pieced it over the years as any person with a brain and a few licks of sense could have. And I did my best to keep it out of the light - until Cersei ruined herself through her own folly."

"A toast," Tywin says dryly, "to our children. Our beautiful, perfect children."

"Peace," Joanna says, taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek. "Not all is lost. Our children may be thrice-cursed fools but _we_ are not. Your grandson will yet sit on the Iron Throne. Above all, Lyanna Stark has no proof. Only shadows and accusations."

He strokes her hair and for a moment, they sit still, wrapped in each other's arms. Lovers still, in spite of the weight of years gone by. _Always lovers, _Joanna thinks, burying her face in his shoulder. _Always._

"Come husband," she finally says, reluctantly. "It is time we took our places in the court."

The Lannisters sit together in a curtained alcove, away from prying eyes and whispering tongues. Tyrion has brought Tysha, heavy with their second child, but Tywin is long past caring. _Maybe a brother for little Lanna, _Joanna thinks. If Jaime and Cersei were to lose their heads today, Tyrion's children would have to be legitimized. Jaime is seated below, ringed with guardsmen.

She slips her hand into Tywin's, the pressure reassuring her as the judges fill in and the king's wives take their thrones on the dais. Lyanna Stark rises and begins to speak, the words filtering past Joanna. _She has no proof. _But then she says, "If it please my honorable lords, I would like to bring in my witness." Tywin's nails dig into Joanna's palms and she curls her fingers tighter around his. Her heart begins to thump wildly and Tyrion utters a muffled oath.

"My lords, may I present to you the Lady Elia Lannister?"


	2. Rhaella

_She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper's brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast._

**\- A Game of Thrones**

* * *

**284 AC, Dragonstone**

"Kneel for your lady mother's blessing, Your Grace."

_Bent, bowed and broken._ Rhaella has seen traitors die with spears thrust through their bellies, their guts spilling grey and greasy on the butcher's block. She now knows what they had felt for the birth has ripped her apart. But more cruel than the fire that rages beneath her flesh, the taut cords of pain twisting round her waist and hips and thighs, is the sight of the tears on her son's face.

"A king may not weep," she whispers. Her fingers come back wet from Viserys' cheeks. "Not even for his mother, not even before those leal councilors who love him well."

"Yes, Mamma." This is hard for him. A steel heart might melt for the waif - tumbled out of his warm bed at the murderer's hour by armed men, bundled in a serving-boy's tatters then dragged to a chamber smelling thickly of blood and milk and told to bid farewell to his mother and infant sister. He is only eight.

She presses her lips to his forehead and he throws his arms around her, fresh tears leaking down his face and into her loosened hair. "Tears are for women, Viserys. If you must grieve, swear a bloody vengeance against the Usurper. Pray and whet your steel till the time is ripe, but do not give in to tears and lamentations."

Good Ser Willem, the last of her loyal knights, steps into the light. My lady, the tide will soon be in and we must set sail, he will say. She holds up her hand to forestall him. She pulls her little prince away from her shoulder, wipes his face with a square of silk a maid hands her. Studies him, intent on the face that she fears she will never see again. He has his father's eyes, a watery lilac lighter than his brother's. But the rest is all hers.

"You are Rhaegar's heir," she reminds him. "You are King Viserys, the Third of your name. You leave your mother ailing, your sister defenseless, your kingdom bleeding and disconsolate but when you return, strong and fierce, we will welcome you with open arms." The baby is brought and she lets the boy hold her for a moment, awkward but intrigued. Gently he touches her face, slips his finger inside her clawed fist. His eyes widen in delight when she clenches tight around it. "Remember those you leave behind for we will never forget."

He nods. "I am the last dragon," he whispers, as solemn as she.

She hides her smile and kisses him one last time. "Yes, Your Grace. Yes you are."

They whisk him away from her and only when the door clangs shut, the sound dreadful in its finality, does she allow the tears she's held back to fall. "Tanae," she calls the wet-nurse, "bring the princess to me." Daenerys is a tiny scrap, so small and sickly in appearance that Rhaella does not truly expect her to live.

_Viserys will never claim you for his queen, sweet one_, she thinks sadly, _but then perhaps it is for the best. The Usurper will never sink his claws into you either._ The babe would have surely perished on the journey to Braavos if sent with her brother, just as Rhaella would have if she had attempted to pack her bleeding and tender body on a ship in the midst of the fiercest storm the maesters had seen in a century. It was why she had chosen to stay behind even after Ser Willem had begged her to accompany Viserys.

_Your presence will lend legitimacy to his claim, Your Grace,_ he had pleaded. _He is but a boy but you are known to have friends in the Free Cities, you have the power to broker alliances. I will always be the king's faithful servant, advise him as his brother would have wanted, but there is so much a queen can do that a servant cannot. _

_I cannot,_ she had told him simply. _I am dying and I would like it to be in peace._ She had bade the maester shift the linens her body was shrouded in and Ser Willem had recoiled at the sight of the damage done. After that he had said no more.

"You are the seventh born," she murmurs aloud. Her first was born amidst smoke, her last in a storm, their births both heralded by the salt of her tears. "Tanae, see that she is burnt with me when she dies. On the self-same pyre."

The wet-nurse opens her eyes very wide. _Descended from dragonseed, this one_, Rhaella thinks idly, noting the blackcurrant shade of her eyes. Dragonstone is peppered with Targaryen bastards and their children and children's children. "Begging Your Grace's pardon but the little princess seems to thrive," Tanae says defensively. "Sucks as strong as my own boy and he's a blacksmith's get." She gives a saucy wink. "Well, that's the story I tell my man."

Rhaella laughs. "Nevertheless, there is no space left for her in this world. Nor me, either. It is best that we die and quickly."

"Your Grace mustn't lose courage," the girl says firmly. "You wouldn't say this to the little king, would you? You've sent him off to fight his way through. Shouldn't you do the same?"

"You are pert," Rhaella says mildly._ And right._ The baby in her arms opens her eyes, just a chink but enough to see that the color is a rich, true violet. Amethyst, a poet would call it. Like Rhaegar's, like Rhaella's own. "Do you thrive, little one?" The baby wrinkles her red little face, in a moment she will begin to cry for milk. Rhaella makes a sudden decision. "Unbind my breasts," she orders the wet-nurse. "I was never allowed to feed any of my own children, save Rhaegar for a few days, but this one I will tend for as long as the gods give me."

For this one, fatherless, brotherless, is hers alone. _Bent. Bowed,_ she thinks. _But perhaps not broken._

* * *

_"I built a fleet at Robert's command, took Dragonstone in his name. Did he take my hand and say, Well done, brother, whatever should I do without you? No, he blamed me for letting Willem Darry steal away Viserys and the babe, as if I could have stopped it."_

**\- A Clash of Kings**

* * *

**284 AC, Dragonstone**

"I am thrice royal," she says, magnificent in her contempt. "Daughter to Jaehaerys the Second, sister and wife to Aerys the Second, mother to Viserys the Third of his name." The Painted Chamber has a single chair, high-backed and proud, and she sits in it. Like a lackey fetched for a whipping, the boy Stannis is made to stand before her. "At birth I was fourth in line to the throne. When my grandfather, King Aegon of blessed memory, slipped a dragon's egg in my cradle he named me Princess of the Flowering Isle. When I was wed, I was Princess of Dragonstone. And long before you or your contemptible brother were born, I was Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

"Were," Stannis says quietly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"All these things Your Grace was in the past," he says. "You are now Dowager Queen."

"And Queen Mother," she hisses, leaning forward on her chair, her fierce eyes raking the boy from head to toe. He is only twenty but already as tough and leathery as horsehide left out in the sun, they tell her. "Do not forget, Ser, that my son, Viserys, is the only true and rightful king of the realm."

"My lord," Stannis says mildly. He tries to maintain a soldier's severe aspect, but there is a certain brightness in his eyes, a lightness in his boiled-leather face. And why not? His ship _Fury _sits smugly in her bay, when she opens her eyes each morning it is to the sight of men in black-and-gold swarming her keep and bailey, shadowing her from nursery to sept to bedchamber. "His Grace, my brother King Robert, has named me Lord of Dragonstone."

"You are unbelievable," she says flatly. "Did he tell you you could have Dragonstone if you could take it? What glory is there in victory over an old woman and a babe-in-arms?"

Stannis regards her stonily. He has a boy's quick sensitivity to this thrust to his honor. "You and the young princess will be escorted with all due reverence to King's Landing."

"To kneel or to die?" She sits back in her chair. "Tell me, Stannis Baratheon, were you there when my grandchildren were laid before the Iron Throne? My little Rhaenys took half-a-hundred thrusts from a sword. Aegon's fate was no kinder, his head dashed against the wall. Daenerys will give you no such fierce fight, she is even younger. I pray you hold a soft, silk pillow over her face when you do it."

Stannis grinds his teeth. He was forever grinding his teeth as a little boy, she remembers, that and running after Robert's approval which he never got. "What happened to the young prince and princess was lamentable," he says. Some would have added, _Any my brother Robert regrets it most deeply_. But Stannis is not in the habit of peppering his speech with the mistruths that courtesy demands. "On my honor as a knight, I swear that the same will not happen to you or Princess Daenerys."

"Honor is in short supply these days," she observes. "I see plainly that my daughter and I will be required to endure Baratheon honor and courtesy... but someday, soon gods willing, my son will give you a taste of mine." She curls her fingers around each other. "Before you leave, boy, tell me how did Robert receive the news that you'd let King Viserys slip through his fingers? He cannot have been pleased else he would have given you the sweet bounty of Storm's End and not this wet waste at the end of the world."

"Dragonstone will need a seasoned military commander to hold it," Stannis parrots. Perhaps he believes it - for now. He is still very young. "Which His Grace has recognized me to be."

"Really?" She smiles politely. "Is that what Jon Arryn told you? That Dragonstone was an honor and there are richer spoils yet to come your way? A piece of advice for you, because I was fond of your mother - learn to think for yourself."

Stannis sees himself out. Grinding his teeth all the way, no doubt.

* * *

**284 AC, King's Landing**

"I will not kneel."

They have been haggling over these and sundry other points for hours, from noon till evensong. Now the servants come in with tapers to light the chamber. _Haggling l__ike fishwives_, Rhaella reflects. She has seen them at their trade from the windows of Dragonstone, clamoring over cockles and coppers, their wanton coarseness a wondrous change from the courtly words her septas taught her. Now they come to the meat of the matter.

"My lady, be reasonable," Jon Arryn says wearily. He likes to think himself the soul of reason but she has worn him down and taken grim pleasure in it. _Be easy, my lord, _she thinks with amusement. _This ordeal will end soon enough and your sweet young bride will refresh you when you return to her. _

"I am the blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror," she says serenely. She will not be moved by charm or threats, Stannis Baratheon can grind his teeth till they are powdered dust in his mouth, Jon Arryn can sit with her till his old joints are stiff and aching. She will not give an inch. "The Baratheons are descended from a bastard line. As for the Lannisters and the girl, Cersei in particular... we all know what her mother was. She used to be my maid-in-waiting. It is not meet that I should kneel to them."

"It is customary," he says, but not with much hope. "In the North, King Torrhen and Queen Edythe knelt to the Conqueror and his sisters when they pledged their fealty."

"But I never pledged mine," she points out. "Lord Arryn, let me be plain. You are no Tywin Lannister and will never consent to have me consigned to an oubliette or the black cells for my... intransigence. Nor would I yield even if you did, I would rather die with my pride. I am the true steel of Valyria."

Poor Jon Arryn gives up. He nods to a clerk and Rhaella stretches her neck and sees him cross off a line on the scroll laid before him. _Kneeling_. "You will not be allowed to attend the coronation then."

She sniffs. "As though I had any wish to."

"You must be presented to the king and queen," Jon says tiredly. "A small private audience, will that do? If not for yourself, think of your daughter, Your Grace. Let old wounds mend, I beg you. Permit the king to show you and the princess mercy in public. It is for your own safety."

"Lord Arryn," she says, "I was a princess born. A queen. Tell me true, was I ever safe?"

The Lord of Vale and Mountain looks away. _So like a man_, she thinks with disgust. _They will never acknowledge what base creatures they are, beneath the trappings of silk and steel. _"Will you wear mourning to the reception?" he asks instead.

"Do you expect me to prance in scarlet silk?"

"Certainly not," he says, "but perhaps a little discretion in the choice of apparel-"

"I will forestall your simpering and sniveling," she says. "No, I will not wear mourning. My son died over a year ago... as for Aerys, you know how little cause I had to mourn him." The clerk ticks off an item on his little list.

"You will be addressed as Queen Dowager." He hesitates and then adds delicately, "The Lannisters will be present. All of them."

She smiles. Her serenity is like a wall of glass. "I shall look forward to seeing them again." She takes a sip from the spiced hippocrass set before her. King Robert does not stint his guests on rich wines it must be said. "I chanced across your bride the other day. She was very beautiful... and very young. Seventeen, I understand, young enough to be your daughter... or even your granddaughter. You must be very happy with her."

"I am, Your Grace." His face does not glow with a lecher's delight in a child-bride nor does it kindle with the soft tenderness of a doting old man for a young wife. Passing strange, if you come to think of it.

"And are there any hopes of a child? Her sister was delivered of an heir some months ago, and they were wed together."

Is that a shadow that crosses his face? She will have to look into the matter further. "Not yet, Your Grace. But these are early days yet."

* * *

_But whenever Aerys gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night. The day he burned his mace-and-dagger Hand,Jaime and Jon Darry had stood at guard outside her bedchamber whilst the king took his pleasure. "You're hurting me," they had heard Rhaella cry through the oaken door. "You're hurting me."_

**\- A Feast for Crows**

* * *

_Sadly, the marriage between Aerys II Targaryen and his sister, Rhaella, was not as happy; though she turned a blind eye to most of the king's infidelities,the queen did not approve of his "turning my ladies into his whores." (Joanna Lannister was not the first lady to be dismissed abruptly from Her Grace's service, nor was she the last)._

**_\- _The World of Ice and Fire**

* * *

**285 AC, King's Landing**

She stands before the Myrish looking glass, tipped back by a handmaid to show the full length of her. Her women bustle about her, adding the last touches - a spray of rosewater on her pulse, a dab of gold dust on the blades of her collarbones, a hint of color on the points of her cheekbones. Her silver hair she wears high on her head, plaited like a crown with jeweled leaves and gilded flowers. Her gown is ash-and-bone, sewn from a bolt of Volantene silk so rich, the bodice so thickly powdered with diamonds that Cersei Lannister's face will turn as green as her eyes.

A septon would tell her that a widow of her years should be beyond vanity. She would tell him yes, that might be seemly for lesser women but she is a queen. _A Targaryen queen. _

There is a rap on the door. Her guess has proved right - they have sent Jaime Lannister and a squadron of men-at-arms in crimson and gold to escort her. Is that meant to humiliate her? The boy is eighteen or so, she thinks. He looks distinctly uncomfortable as he hovers in the doorway but perhaps it is only the heat that makes him steam, red-faced, in his white velvet cloak.

"Ser Jaime," she says courteously, taking his arm. "When was the last time we met, do you remember?"

"I saw Your Grace the day you left for Dragonstone."

"Ah... I do not remember seeing you but then I was in a hurry to be off. However," she says, "I do remember that you stood guard for me the night before."

"I-I had that honor, Your Grace." If he was red before, now he is pink, blanching in... what can it be? Shame? Guilt? He amuses her.

"I hope you will guard your sister as loyally as you did me."

The eunuch had come to her the night before, creeping in like a snake in rose-colored silks while she took the air in her gardens. _Your Grace will be grieved to see the changes wrought in the throne room, _he had said with a sad little shake of his head. _I grieve more dearly for the changes wrought in this realm, _she'd said sharply.

But she _is_ grieved. She is not a woman much given to the softer sentiments, never has been, but there is something about the absence of the great dragon skulls that had loomed so large over her life that unsettles her. In their place, a few paltry tapestries have been put up, shipped hastily from Storm's End - hunting scenes in green and gold, does and unicorns and songbirds flitting through embroidered thickets while hunters in black-and-gold livery blow their horns and call for their hounds and horses.

Where once her grandfather and father and brother had sat, the boy Robert now sits. A giant of a man but he will need more than mortal strength to keep his seat on the throne the Targaryens hammered together. He looks sulky, like a schoolboy summoned by a stern master who would rather be out and playing the truant. A step beneath him the queen's throne has been placed - an ornate affair of curlicued gold and scarlet leather, heavily padded with velvet cushions for Cersei's comfort.

Her seamstresses have been busy butchering poor Elia's wardrobe, it seems. Cersei's gown is a silk so sheer it will be translucent by candelight, a vermilion so fierce that it can only be the work of dyers from Sunspear. Emeralds the size of pigeons' eggs glitter at her throat and fingers. The Lannisters of the Rock are masters of a fabled wealth but Lord Tywin never gave those jewels to his girl for her trousseau. They are Rhaella's own.

"Rhaella," Cersei says, as bold as polished brass, as though they are equals in any way, "you do not wear your crown I see."

_Would you have snatched it from my head if I had? _She would not put it past the girl. "I left it with my son the king, Cersei," Rhaella says. Wrapped in squares of silk it had sailed to Braavos with him, the only crown she could give him.

"You must not stand on ceremony with us," Cersei says, her voice silk and honey. "Have a chair fetched for the Queen Dowager. A woman of her years ought not be on her feet too long."

"There is but one chair for me," Rhaella says steadily. "I will accept no lesser."

"Lady aunt," Robert says. It costs him a goodly effort to keep his voice low, his tone civil. His face wears no such mask and though Rhaella stands lightly, gracefully she does not forget that only a month ago, this man was bellowing for her head. "Welcome to our court. I trust that your apartments are to your satisfaction?"

"They are adequate. Though I would prefer my old ones." Jon Arryn stands at the foot of the Iron Throne, he is not quite miming the words Robert should say but Rhaella can tell that he wants to.

"Certain matters must be discussed. I thought it would be better if they were discussed in a private atmosphere, a family environment."

"Really?" Rhaella arches an eyebrow. "Is Lord Tywin now a part of our family?" The man is not in armor, not in the great gilded and crested lion-helmet that he favors but he still makes her shudder. _And I once thought him the handsomest man at court. _His eyes are too light, his lips too plump and wormy.

"My lord father is ever ready to provide wise and measured counsel," Cersei says swiftly.

Jon Arryn steps forward, clearly feeling that things will be out of his hands if he leaves them too long. "Your Grace, I beg that you will cooperate. Surely the small trifle of Lord Tywin's presence need not delay us unduly?"

She nods her consent and Maester Pycelle, chain clanking, chins wobbling, reads out a lengthy scroll. _Another faggot for the fire, _she thinks as he reads the royal decree that awards her the lands and incomes of the Flowering Isle for her lifetime, _another traitor for the_ _burning_. Still, it comes as a small relief. She is not to be married off - yet. She had rather feared that Tywin Lannister had wanted her for himself - not for her looks or her lineage, but simply as a lion wants a mouse. To make a meal of it. "What of my daughter?" she asks finally. "What provision is to be made for the Princess of Dragonstone?"

Tywin speaks this time. "She will be married, Your Grace," he says as though this is to answer all her questions.

"To whom?"

"To whomsoever it pleases the king."

Lord Tywin escorts her from the throne room. He offers her his arm but she does not take it as she did his arms. "I would rather touch a snake, my lord."

"You are wroth at me, my lady." He looks truly disappointed by her. "It was nothing personal."

"You were Hand when Rhaenys was born," she tells him. "You presented her with a loving cup of gold, heaped high with silver, when she was named. You _held_ her, I passed her to your arms myself and you said that she had her mother's coloring, that she would grow into a beauty." She could weep to think of it, how light and birdlike she was, the nonsense songs she sang to herself without rhyme or reason, her little black kitten. "I knew the ways of war, the butchered babes, I can see why Aegon could not live, cruel as it is... but a child you knew. A little _girl_ who was no threat to you. And in such a way."

"Do you truly believe that I needed to give the order to leave her savaged as she was?" He says it calmly but she can see the spark of annoyance flare for a moment in his eyes. "There is no telling what a man does when his blood runs hot."

"You left no orders and that is worse. I thought you more seasoned than that." She stops and stares at him. These are her only weapons - her words, her tears, her flashing eyes, furious and futile. "Or did your blood run hot as well? She _was_ Elia's daughter." _And how you hated her for snatching Rhaegar from Cersei. _

"Mayhap." He sighs. "My lady, if I may trouble you to remember an incident of small consequence? It was many years ago when Aerys had just ascended his throne. Joanna and I were not wed or betrothed then, she danced with your lord husband. You had something to say of it, words spoken with much heat."

"I said that I did not approve of my brother turning my ladies into his whores." _I screamed it for everyone to hear. _She does not color, she will not be shamed for speaking the truth. "I threatened to dismiss her for her wanton ways. After a great deal of cajoling and then coercion I kept her on sufferance... till she was safely wed."

"She was dismissed in disgrace."

"Would you rather have had her in King's Landing?" She snaps. "Flashing her cunny at Aerys every chance she got? I saw her. You did too, though you pretended to be blind. Still do. You would rather see her haloed and why? Because she died untimely?"

"You spoke acridly of her. Many times."

"She betrayed me," Rhaella says flatly. _We were friends. We were._ "I did not expect it of her."

"It grieved her." Tywin sighs again. "That grieved me."

And understanding blooms on her like some noxious flower. "You cannot harm me, Tywin Lannister," she laughs scornfully. "There is nothing left that you can take from me."

He bows. They are at the door to her cage, gilded though it may be, again. "My lady, you forget your daughter."

* * *

_It is beautiful, she thought, as beautiful as Joffrey, when they laid him in my arms. No man had ever made her feel as good as she had felt when he took her nipple in his mouth to nurse._

**\- A Feast for Crows**

* * *

**286 AC, King's Landing**

There is a new prince laid in the royal nursery, a new heir for the new dynasty. For the sake of appearances she sends a cornucopia of fruit to Cersei - peaches with a rosy flush, fleshy pomegranates, Fossoway apples which are the best of all, apricots, blueberries and strawberries and blackberries, even oranges and melons from Dorne. A lavish bounty and each will be tested for poison for they think her unsubtle in her ways. The Lannister queen will need her strength if she continues to nurse her baby herself.

"A beautiful child," she says courteously, at the naming ceremony. And he is, with a dusting of gold on his head and eyes that are turning as green as his mother's. She does not hold him though. When he dies - and he will, he must - she wants her hands to be clean, she does not want his infant specter haunting her dreams.

Tywin Lannister smiles at the babe. It would be sweet to see if she thought he cared at all about the babe. He does not, she is certain. He only sees him as a means to further Lannister glory and power.

Dany - the nursemaids call her that and Rhaella has fallen into the habit - is at the toddling stage. She wears a long gown of ivory satin, embroidered with pink pansies, the train too long for her to manage so it is clipped to one side. Jon Arryn scoops her up affectionately, he has no children yet and he has grown quite fond of her. The same cannot be said of his lady wife. She seems to take the existence of every child in the Red Keep as a personal affront, she resists being drawn into tenderness towards them. Rhaella has seen her kick a servant's boy, a sweet little thing of four.

"The prince and princess are evenly matched in beauty," Jon Arryn says amiably and Rhaella thinks it a pretty compliment. Until a sennight later when the council - to which she is not called - meets. Where her daughter's hand is disposed of in marriage to Prince Joffrey. _To whomsoever it pleases the king._

But it is not Robert's pleasure. It is Jon Arryn's.

She finds him at the sept. "I will not permit it," she screams and the septon almost drops his censor, startled. At a discreet nod from the Hand, he retreats and looks glad to be dismissed. "I would rather burn her than have her marry the Usurper's son." _That at least would be honorable. Cruel but honorable. _

He is on his knees and he remains there, as though a supplicant. Silent for no words of his can stem the tide of her rage and he knows. She could kick him.

"You swore that we would be treated honorably! What are the Arryn words? _As high as honor_." Still nothing. "She will wed Viserys and no other. And at their wedding, you will be clapped in red-hot irons and die the death Aerys never gave you."

"She will be fostered at Casterly Rock by Lord Tywin's own sister."

At this, she drops to her knees. _Words. Tears. Looks. But you have another weapon. _"You cannot do this to me," she cries and the tears glimmer in her eyes. A moment's weakness makes her forget herself. She is beautiful, all has been, always be. Surely he can see that? "Jon, you have known me these many years. You knew me when I was a maid first flowered, when I was a woman grown... but I was always another's."

He drops his eyes as though ashamed. By her or by his own unspoken, unacknowledged lust? "Your Grace, please. This is not seemly."

"I am a mother." _I do not care. _"Did Lord Tywin suggest that my daughter be stolen from me?"

"Certain concessions had to be made to him."

"But you made the match."

"Yes." He nods slowly, his words ponderous and weighty as though he has put a great deal of thought into the matter. "The Baratheon prince and the Targaryen princess. The stag and the dragon should be allied by marriage, what could be more fitting?" _And then they shall see that her brother, wearing his mother's flowered crown, robbed of his sister, is no threat, is a jape rather. _

"Robert must have taken a powerful deal of convincing. And Cersei?"

The way his eyes sidle away from hers tells her all she needs to know. _There is the chink. And now I must whet my blade. _He puts his hand on her arm. "For what it is worth, I am sorry. It is cruel to part you from her."

She snatches her arm from him as though burned. "You are not," she says. "But you will be."

He sighs, as though exhausted by her. "My lady, when will you leave off threats and dour prophesying? They are futile and you know it." _You have always been swept away by fate, _he means_. As an obedient daughter, a dutiful wife, a weak mother. Can you not surrender yourself to your latest indignity quietly? _

"Because I am a woman, a widow, a mother? Because I was Aerys' wife and you saw me battered and buffeted at court so many years?" She laughs scornfully. "You do wrong to so dismiss me, my lord. I am still a dragon."

After Daenerys is put to bed that night, she walks in her gardens. The groves are thick and lush, the marble maidens pouring streams of flowers from jugs hide her from view. The eunuch wears a coy lavender tonight, the sleeves edged with silver braid. "I should have been warned," she tells him directly. Before Cersei's belly began to swell, she was warned. Before sundry appointments on the Small Council, she was notified. The spider creeps through the cracks, no doubt hoping she will spare him when Viserys takes the throne. She will not. But in the meanwhile he can make himself useful.

"Alas, Your Grace, there was naught to be done," he says sadly, wringing his fat, white hands. "And I did not wish to trouble your mother's tender heart before necessary."

"My tender mother's heart is none of your concern. I am displeased." She studies him by the light of the glowworms and the tiny candles scattered in lacquered pots around the garden. He is repulsive to her. Though he smells like a woman he leaves a trail of slime wherever he goes.

"That grieves me, Your Grace. I would not wish that for the world." He bows. "May I offer you some small consolation? A letter from Sunspear that I believe might be of interest to you." He shimmies it out from his waist-length sleeves.

"Oberyn Martell," she says. "He is known to be a rash young man."

"But rash young men are the bravest, the quickest to action are they not, my lady?"

"Just so," she agrees. "I would not expect such a letter of his brother Doran."

"Prince Oberyn was fiercely attached to his sister." A delicate pause. "Some might say excessively so." She does not pick up on it, that is a filthy rumor and old.

"Prince Lewyn's bones must be returned to Dorne," she says, rolling up the letter and thrusting it through her girdle. In an hour it will be cinders. "I knew him of old, he always knew how to make me laugh. Notwithstanding that I had little cause in my life to be light-hearted. Lewyn and Loreza... they were dear friends and they never betrayed me."

The eunuch offers her an oily smile. "Who better to return them than the queen who is still loved by Dorne?"

She laughs. "I would like to see them letting me sail for Sunspear on my own."

"Not you alone, my lady," the eunuch says patiently. "Your presence would be the oil to soothe troubled waters. Lord Arryn would wish to see how Dorne stands. And perhaps, who can say, the king would like to join him."

"The Usurper," Rhaella corrects him absently. But she is smiling.

* * *

_"Is it true he tried to raise Dorne for Viserys?"_

_"No one speaks of it, but yes. Ravens flew and riders rode, with what secret messages I never knew. Jon Arryn sailed to Sunspear to return Prince Lewyn's bones, sat down with Prince Doran, and ended all the talk of war. But Robert never went to Dorne thereafter, and Prince Oberyn seldom left it." _

**\- A Storm of Swords**

* * *

**287 AC, Sunspear**

Princess Arianne is eleven years old, small for her age but not so small and frail as Elia was. A sturdy child with a dark, lustrous beauty that bides fair promise to break hearts someday. "You must take after your lady mother," Rhaella tells her. She wears a band of copper coins around her forehead, a Norvoshi fashion from her mother's lands, and a sheer veil of star-spangled gauze in the Dornish way.

Arianne smiles politely. In spite of her tender years, she has a queenly manner, an easy exuberance and charming way with strangers. It must come of being the heir, of being treated as though her words, her opinions hold weight. Rhaella cannot remember being at so much ease at eleven.

"Your niece is charming," Rhaella tells Oberyn. "I have half a mind to take her back with me."

"She might be a consolation to Your Grace in these afflicting times." Prince Oberyn's smile is a revelation. He puts his whole crooked heart into it and it is no wonder that scores of women and boys sigh for him. _If I were some years younger, I would be tempted as well. _People say he favors his uncle Lewyn but Lewyn was not nearly such a rogue. "Particularly since Princess Daenerys is to leave you."

"To be taken from me, you mean."

They walk in the gardens, past courtyards tiled in marble and lapis lazuli, watercourses through which goldfish and silverfish swim, loggias where the pillars are swathed in brilliant silks. A fine trickle of sweat runs down her back but she enjoys the heat. "Your mother married for love," she tells the gallant prince. He stretches and plucks a lemon, as golden as distilled sunshine, for her. Offers it to her in cupped palms and in one smooth gesture, slips a letter up her sleeve. "I was her bedmaid the night before she was wed, in this very palace," she tells him, without missing a beat. "And in the morning Joanna and I garlanded her with flowers."

Viserys has written to her. His letters have changed, they are not the chunky capitals she taught him when he was a little boy. He forms his letters as elegantly as a scribe now, his maester has been teaching him many hands as a nobleman ought to be taught, the many tongues which he will need in the Free Cities. His letter is peppered with courtly phrases, she is now his lady mother and not Mamma.

Ser Willem is dead now and Viserys has moved on from that first manse in Braavos. She has recommended him to the Archon of Tyrosh who knows her of old. Viserys will grow up in the Tyroshi palace, shielded by Unsullied, learning the way of shield and spear and sword from the best sellswords money can buy, sipping fine pear brandy - perhaps dyeing his hair green or blue or violet in the fashion of Lorath, she thinks fondly. She is relieved to see that he is growing up. _Soon he will be a man._

"Your Grace's presence in Dorne is delight to us all," Prince Doran tells her at supper. But a shadow crosses his face. He does not truly want her here, can he sense the hornet's nest that she and his brother are about to kick? "It is too long since you last graced us with a visit."

She favors him with a pearly smile. "I would have come sooner if I were at liberty."

Robert is enjoying himself. This far from his venomous wife, he lets his eyes and hands wander freely throughout the feast. Purple as a plum from wine and good cheer he pulls a succession of laughing, black-eyed Dornish girls into his lap.

"This must be distressing for Your Grace," young Lady Arryn, reluctantly dragged all the way to Dorne, whispers to her. "It must remind you of unhappier times." _Of your wicked husband, _she means.

Rhaella has never had much of a head for wine and the Dornish reds are stronger than she is used to. "I never grudged Aerys his women," she says frankly. "But when Joanna offered herself to him, or no when he took her from me... I never knew which but I hated them both for it. Her more because I thought-I thought... and now I will never find out whether it was him first or her."

In the morning, they ride through the Shadow City. Ser Barristan helps her mount her new sand steed - a gift from Prince Oberyn, her coat like silver satin, her mane bright as sea foam. He has not dared speak to her - where would a traitor like him find the courage? But today he ventures forth. Perhaps it is the heat that makes him lose his head.

"She is a beauty, Your Grace," he says affectionately, "what will you call her?" He was her grandfather's knight long before she was born, he had taught her to mount her first pony. But he has long lost the right to be familiar with her.

"It is a wonder," she says, watching him from on high, "that you dare speak to me."

He sighs and bows. _He is old, _she thinks. _A traitor but I will give him the mercy of a swift death. _"I had hoped that Your Grace might find it in your heart to forgive me. When you wish for my company again, I will speak but never till then."

"It is not my forgiveness you should ask for," she says. "It is Rhaenys' and Aegon's and Elia's." As an afterthought she adds, "And Aerys'."

His fingers on her reins grow white. "I failed in my duty to them," he says miserably, "but, my lady, I could not be in two places at once."

"No," she sighs. "But you are an old man. You should have had the wit to do what I would have to Rhaegar, if I were near him."

"My lady?"

"A swift clout to the head. That would have knocked him down from the clouds."

In the heat of the day, Robert does not don his full armor. _Just as Varys promised. _He has declined Oberyn's gift of a black stallion, but it makes little matter. Everything else is in place. Not a breeze stirs through the city, it is a damp heat that the swinging fans of palm-leaves borne by servants does little to alleviate. The Dornish line up on the streets to watch the new king and the old queen pass by, hundreds of them, their eyes as hard and flat as granite. Mercers and pillow-house girls watch from their balconies, men and women cling to the slight shade offered by the striped awnings of the marketplace. They do not cheer but they do not boo either. Instead, they watch. They wait.

She rides a few paces behind Robert, looking neither to left or right. She feels a prickling between her shoulderblades, a tension that communicates itself to her mount which grows skittish. She is afraid. But she must not betray herself. _I am a dragon, _she reminds herself. _I must be free of fear._

"My lady, are you unwell?" Ser Barristan, at her side, asks solicitously. He looks wretched, draped in sweltering steel and dense velvet but he still has concern for her. It is touching. "You are pale."

"Oh nothing," she says fretfully. "I feel hot, that is all."

"If I might rec-"

She screams, just a split second before the flaming arrow strikes, a burning comet blooming from the back of Robert's tunic. And then there is madness.

* * *

_Their father had summoned Cersei to court when she was twelve, hoping to make her a royal marriage. He refused every offer for her hand, __preferring to keep her with him in the Tower of the Hand while she grew older and more womanly and ever more beautiful. _

**\- A Storm of Swords**

* * *

**288 AC, King's Landing**

They could prove nothing against her or Prince Oberyn. Nevertheless, Jon Arryn begins to regard her in the way he might a kitten that had sprouted fangs and talons, a soft ball of fur erupting into scales and leathery wings and hot yellow eyes. He suggests a sept. When she looks down her nose in scorn at the suggestion, he shuts her in the Maidenvault.

Robert Baratheon will wear the scars to his dying day, a puckered tree of pink-and-white skin on his broad back. Not that that is enough for her. _He should have died, _she thinks resentfully. The hours pass slow in her chambers now, she is not permitted to visit the gardens or the godswood or the library. If she wishes to pray, a septon chosen by Cersei will visit her. _Varys promised me he and Jon Arryn would die. _

The realm would have descended into chaos - Tywin Lannister so far off at the Rock, Stannis Baratheon equally far sulking at Dragonstone. The boy Renly and the babe Joffrey would have been swiftly dispatched and Viserys would have crossed the Narrow Sea with his Tyroshi soldiers.

Her courses dry up. Her bedmaids, who are all Cersei's creatures, report the news gleefully. Jon Arryn relaxes, he is willing to come to terms, to show pity to a woman with a barren womb. For what is a woman if she cannot bear children? _A husk, _he will dismiss her. Does he think her spirit has dried up with her moon's blood? He is a fool like all men.

Cersei Lannister visits her, radiant in celestial blue. Her twin trails her like a lovelorn puppy. "I brought you a gift," she says sweetly and her maids unfold a bolt of cloth. The color is vile enough to make Rhaella retch, a brown that reminds her of the shit that coats Fleabottom alleys. "I thought the shade would be more suitable to a woman of your years. You must leave off the gayer colors that would become a maiden or a mother, Rhaella - but I trust good Septon Unceon has made the limitations of your station clear to you?"

Cersei loves nothing better than to gloat. "You must be anxious for news of Daenerys," she presses on when Rhaella says nothing. "I know I would go mad if I were kept so long from my Joff. I would lead my captors a merry dance."

_And what makes you think I haven't? _But she adopts the pose of a meek and troubled woman. Hides her face into a handkerchief as though to wipe away tears when all the while she is laughing up her sleeve. _My boy will soon be a man, _she thinks with satisfaction, _and in the meanwhile I will lead you all a merry dance._

Cersei studies her through narrowed eyes. Abruptly she says, "I learned a great deal from you, Rhaella. When you were queen and I served you."

"Oh?"

"Of what not to do." Cersei tosses her head, her face full of scorn. "I always knew I would be a queen. And I swore to myself that I would never allow myself to be treated as you were."

"Have you succeeded?"

"Yes," says Cersei smugly.

Rhaella smiles. "Then why do I hear that last month you came to supper with half your face so heavily powdered you looked like a moon cake?"

Cersei storms out. She was never very patient with mockery.

Rhaella sends a maid to the kitchens. "I want a kitten," she says, "a little black one, as dear and pretty as you can find." The maid gawks at her - perhaps she thinks isolation has made the old queen quite mad - but she is bound to obey.

She ties a ribbon of crimson silk around the little creature's neck, has it put into a dainty basket and sent to the royal nursery. "Tell Cersei that I gave Rhaenys a kitten when she turned two," she says. "She named him Balerion. No doubt Joffrey will wish to choose a different name for his new pet."

Months later, gossip reaches her ear that the kitten was found at the foot of a staircase. Stone dead. The fall had not killed it though, its neck had been wrung before it had been thrown down the flight of stairs.

* * *

_"Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the __ford."_

_"Rubies," Sansa said, lost. "What rubies?"_

_Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. "Rhaegar's rubies. This is where King Robert killed him and won the crown."_

**\- A Game of Thrones**

* * *

**289 AC, Casterly Rock**

The Iron Islands erupt in rebellion, at no one's instigation, by no one's planning. The Greyjoy on his battered rock wants to wear a crown and Robert deals with him as Rhaegar should have dealt with Robert - with the crushing force of the mailed fist.

Jon Arryn has her sent to Casterly Rock, he says that he only thinks of her comfort and that he hopes a visit to her daughter will lift her spirits but really he wants to get her out of the way. Should things go ill for the Baratheons, there will always be guards at the Rock to ensure that she is found at the bottom of a staircase with her neck broken.

Daenerys is a pale child and tiny. Lady Genna Frey has the command of her and she is shaping her up to be the timidest, most frightened little girl that ever was. It is not that they beat her with sticks, it is their cold-hearted lovelessness, the way they speak to her - the thousand little jabs that can frighten a child, make her doubt herself. She scarcely remembers her mother - just enough to be frightened of her.

"I brought you a gift, child," she tells her daughter, this shy little stranger, sadly. They are not even allowed to be alone together - what, do the Lannisters expect them to escape down a drain or up a chimney? Instead they must meet under the censorious eyes of a score of Lannister women while Genna Frey watches over them like a toad in clover. _At least Joanna is safe in her grave. I could not have borne to have her raising my daughter. _

Daenerys' eyes light up at the promise of a gift. She hugs the doll Rhaella offers her and says shyly, "Lady Genna never allowed me a doll, lady mother. She said it was too childish."

_But you are only five_. "I will have words with that Frey woman. Are you fed properly? I see that you barely eat."

"Ladies should be dainty," Daenerys says in a small voice. "They should eat like birds." She sleeps alone too, Rhaella gathers. When Genna Frey learned that she was frightened of the dark, she had her locked into her bedroom without candles every night - to teach her courage, she claimed. _Why not an oubliette while you were at it? _

"If Genna Frey eats like a bird she must be a vulture." The woman is nearly as broad as she is tall. "Are you happy with your gift?"

Daenerys nods. "Lady mother, will you pass the Ruby Ford when you go back to King's Landing?"

Rhaella is amused. "Do you even know what the Ruby Ford is? Or where it lies?"

"Its a river," Daenerys says firmly. "Will you?"

_Unlikely. _"Perhaps," Rhaella says to humor her.

"Will you get me something? Rubies?"

Rhaella is quite lost. "You will have my rubies when you are older. But where do you expect me to find them at the bottom of a river?"

"Oh but those are my brother Rhaegar's rubies," Daenerys says. "When King Robert fought him, the rubies from his armor fell all into the river."

"If they did, they must all have washed upstream by now." Rhaella grimaces. "That is not a story for little children, who told you it? And you must never call him _King_ Robert - he is an usurper."

"Rhaegar's rubies are magical," Daenerys insists, with a child's naivete. "If you look into them you can see the future."

Rhaella laughs. "Now _that _is a story," she says. "Who put such notions into your head, child?"

"Tyrion," Daenerys says. "Sometimes he lets me look through the pictures in his books. Sometimes he tells me stories when I have the dreams about the white and black dragons and I can't sleep."

"Genna Frey permits you to associate with the _dwarf_?" Rhaella hisses. She is furious. Her tender child, have they no care for her welfare at all? "I will have her horsewhipped."

"But he's my friend, lady mother," Daenerys says, frightened at her mother's sudden rage but attempting to be brave. Her voice trembles. "He's my only friend."

Eddard Stark is known to be a man of honor - in his own cold, northern way. Doubtless he thought he had his reasons for rebellion - it was his father and brother Aerys strung up and roasted, his little sister Rhaegar took for his pleasure. Him she bears the least animosity towards.

_You were there at the Battle of the Ruby Ford, _she writes to him. _Tell me true, did my son suffer much as he was slain? _His wife is with child again, a third Stark pup to add to the litter. She adds a note to congratulate him.

_No, Your Grace, _the answer comes swiftly by raven. He is gentle towards her, courteous, offering her much more information than she had asked for. He too bears her no ill will, not like Robert who still views her as an extension of Rhaegar. _He died swiftly, the blow of the warhammer clean and true, and his last word was a woman's name._

_Lyanna?_ she wonders, knowing that this is one mystery she will never solve, not till she meets her baby boy again in the Seventh Heaven. She will berate him mercilessly for his folly when she does and then, weeping like a mother, fall into his arms. _Elia? Rhaella?_

* * *

_"That green-haired girl was the Archon's daughter. I was to have sent you to Tyrosh in her place. You would have served the Archon as a __cupbearer and met with your betrothed in secret, but your mother threatened to harm herself if I stole another of her children, and I... I could not do __that to her."_

**\- A Feast for Crows**

* * *

**290 AC, King's Landing**

"No," she says. "No and no and no. My son cannot be dead."

Cersei takes it on herself to break the news. She wraps herself around Rhaella like some poisonous jungle vine choking the life out of a tree. "My dear, how your heart must be breaking."

She shoves the woman away from her. "You are lying," she says simply. "I will not believe it unless I see his body."

"That," Cersei says, her eyes glittering with malice, "can be arranged. We thought it would be cruel to show you but if you insist..."

They bring her his bones, a body cannot be preserved all the way across the Narrow Sea in summer. His hands they have cut off and preserved in special oils as proof, the royal rings still glittering on his long fingers. The tunic he wore, ivory brocade with the patch of blood blooming over his heart like a scarlet flower.

"He died in a Tyroshi brothel," Cersei sighs, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "A red moon house where men go to indulge themselves in bloodying women." What she means is, _his shameful death was witnessed by multitudes. _There can be no question that Viserys is still alive, the Baratheons and their network of spies and assassins will have seen to that.

"I am sorry," Arryn tells her, consolatory but not at all ashamed of himself. "But he was almost a man grown. And after the Greyjoy rebellion he could not be allowed to live. You know the way of it, Your Grace..."

"He was fourteen," she says dully. "Not a man grown." Arryn looks away. His septons and his king will soothe his troubled conscience. He will learn to forget the accusation in her eyes. He will learn to make peace with himself, tell himself everyday that the last dragon was almost a man grown. That he is no Tywin Lannister ordering the murder of children, that all he does is for the good of the realm.

Letters are written to her, to console her in her afflicting time. She burns them all. She is dead now.

"Your Grace, you must eat."

"Your Grace, you must rest."

"My lady, will you not think of your daughter? She will need a defender..."

She turns her face to the wall, eyes wide open, mouth open in a soundless scream. Her heart has been gouged out by teeth and claws, her soul sucked out. Now all that is left is the husk.

* * *

_The lad flushed. "That was not me. I told you. That was some tanner's son from Pisswater Bend whose mother died birthing him. His father sold __him to Lord Varys for a jug of Arbor gold. He had other sons but had never tasted Arbor gold. Varys gave the Pisswater boy to my lady mother and __carried me away."_

**\- A Dance with Dragons**

* * *

**290 AC, King's Landing**

Varys is the brightest thing in her room, as bright as a candle-flame in his robes of sunflower-yellow. It hurts to look at him. "No," she says wearily. She does not even lift up her head from the pillow. "I will not believe it. Aegon was butchered at his mother's breast."

He is not smiling sweetly for once. He is as grave as she has ever seen him. "Your Grace," he says, "I bought the babe for a jug of Arbor Gold. I smuggled him into Maegor's Holdfast under my own cloak."

"If you have, you have kept it very close to your chest. Six years and I was never told."

"I spared the little prince because it was my duty," Varys says. "I could not see him brought to harm. But I never thought he would be as worthy a king as Prince Viserys. Prince Viserys had the lesser claim but he was older, his blood purer."

"Are you about to say that all you did you did for the good of the realm?"

He sighs heavily as though she disappoints him. "Prince Viserys is dead," he says patiently as though speaking to a particularly stupid child. "But Prince Aegon is a child and only a little younger than his uncle was when you sent him away to Braavos."

"And will you protect him as you did Viserys?"

"Lord Arryn never included me in his councils," he says. "This I swear to you. He employed Lord Baelish in his endeavors, not trusting completely in my loyalty. He conducted all his meetings under the wide skies in gardens and the godswood, far from the reach of my little birds. He was right to do so, I would have warned you at once if I had known."

"Who _is_ this Lord Baelish I keep hearing about?"

"A creature of Lady Arryn's," Varys says. "He was fostered at Riverrun and she knew him as a child. A very clever little man with the most miraculous talent of conjuring gold dragons and silver stags out of thin air. Littlefinger we call him. Would Your Grace like to know why?"

"No." She is tired, she would like to bury her face in her pillow and sleep forever. Even if the boy _is_ truly Aegon, what does it matter? Arryn and Lannister and Baratheon will gut him like they did his father, his grandfather, his uncle. "I am an old woman and done. Involve someone else in your plots and scheming."

"Would you trust Lord Connington, Your Grace?"

"You mean Jon?" She remembers him as a boy, the shock of flaming red hair, the stubborn look on his face as he hacked away with his tourney sword. "Yes. He idolized Rhaegar. But he's long dead now, I hear."

Varys smiles. It is not a very pleasant smile. "And if he was not?"

"If any of Rhaegar's boyhood playmates are to be brought to life again, I would sooner have Arthur Dayne."

"Noble Ser Arthur is alas, long dead. But Jon Connington is not." He offers her a tightly-furled scroll. "He writes to Your Grace."

She does not take it.

"I hear," Varys says with a sigh, "that Princess Daenerys is soon to be summoned to court. Lord Arryn thinks she and her betrothed should meet, grow accustomed to each other."

"Genna Frey will have care of her. Not me."

Varys tucks the letter away. "If you would wish to read it-"

"I won't."

"-Your Grace always knows where to find me."

* * *

**291 AC, King's Landing**

Daenerys is stick-like, as small as a snail tucked in Jaime Lannister's arms. His lips are pressed tight together, as though furious. "Your Grace," he says with perfunctory courtesy and drops her daughter on her bed. "I thought you might wish to attend to the princess yourself."

She glances at the child incuriously. Her arms are mottled with bruises, blood welling in dark spots just under the pale flesh. Her lip is torn, her gown muddied. She is white with terror. "Why would you think that? The princess has an army of nursemaids and attendants. I am only her mother."

"She was playing with the prince." He says it as though the words should explain all.

"Rough wooing," she says mildly. "Anais, bring a cloth and warm water and see to the princess. She seems to have fallen."

"She did not fall, Your Grace," Jaime says through gritted teeth.

"Joffrey is only five," Rhaella says. Anais takes the little girl away to another room, cooing over her. Stoic as ever, Daenerys does not cry.

"But his knights are not."

She raises an eyebrow. "You are his Sworn Shield, Ser Jaime. By definition, one of his knights."

"When I came and saw what had happened, I took the princess away." His lip curls in disgust. "Your Grace, you must see-"

"You are strangely fond of this child," Rhaella says. "Why, Ser Jaime? She is pretty, I grant you, but why would you prefer her to your own nephew? The white cloak hides many violent desires, I know - a love of boys, beasts, sisters even. Is young children one of yours?"

It is so very amusing to see him splutter and lose his composure. He does not truly take after Tywin. "I visited the princess whenever I went to Casterly Rock," he says finally. "Yes, I am fond of her, Your Grace. I love my nephew but unfortunately, he takes after my sister."

"I am pleased that she has at least one loyal white knight. I never did. Not Ser Gerold, not Ser Barristan though they were both fond of me and they all saw what my brother did to me." She sighs. "Though if it is her love you hope for, you might be disappointed. She will fear you when she finds out who killed her father."

"She knows already," Jaime says quietly and this is a surprise. "I told her so myself."

"While your brother was telling her stories of magical rubies."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind." She flicks her fingers in dismissal. "Well what do you want me to do? You are waiting so patiently that you must want me to do something for you."

Jaime takes a deep breath. "Speak to the Hand," he says as though he has thought this over. "Speak to the queen. Ask that the princess be sent back to Casterly Rock."

"Ser Jaime," she says frankly, "I will do no such thing. Daenerys is a plaything for Joffrey now. A shiny new toy. He will grow tired of her quickly, as children do, and then his fancy will pass to someone else. By the time they are wed, he will have little interest in her save now and then to get an heir on her. It is better for her that she bears the brunt of his temper now, when she is a child and bruises quickly fade, then later when they are both older."

Ser Jaime glares at her.

"You will think me an unfeeling mother but bruises fade," she repeats. "Burns scar forever." And she lifts the sleeve of her gown, rolls it all the way past her elbow and higher up till he can see her shoulder. "This was Aerys' gift to me."

Ser Jaime retreats. She puts Daenerys to bed herself, with a dose of milk of the poppy. _I am sorry, sweetling, _she thinks. _I am only a woman. I can do nothing for you. _

That night, she finds Jon Connington's letter squirreled under her pillow. And this time she reads it.

* * *

_As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb._

**\- A Storm of Swords**

* * *

**292 AC, King's Landing**

"Your Grace, you must stop spreading these calumnies," Jon Arryn says firmly.

She is watching Jaime swing her daughter in the garden, shrieking with laughter. Two-year-old Myrcella holds her nurse's hand, patiently waiting for her turn. _He is good with little girls. Who would have thought? _"What calumnies do you mean?"

"That Jon Connington's feigned boy is Prince Aegon. You cannot believe these rumors to be true!"

"I do not spread them, you know," she says mildly. "I merely corroborate them, if asked." And adds, "And he is _King _Aegon, of course."

"Do you believe them? Have you even seen the boy?"

"It makes a good song," Rhaella says mildly. "The Pisswater Prince and the jug of Arbor gold. Who knew real life could be as satisfactory?" Jon almost throws his hands up. "How fares your lady wife?" she asks. "I lit seven candles to the Mother when I heard she was safely delivered - I hope this little one thrives. It is hard for a woman to lose so many children in such quick succession, I know all the pain of it. You intend to name the boy Robert, I hear?"

"His mother calls him Robin," Jon says. "Sweetrobin. But yes, the king is to stand godfather to him."

_Provided he lives long enough to be named, _she thinks. _His brothers and sisters did not. _

He gives her the droopy look of a basset hound. "Your Grace will you not give up this folly?"

She laughs in his face, merry as a maiden. "Consign me to a penitent's cell in the sept, force me into the Silent Sisters' covenant, burn me. My words will still fly like arrows." And he knows this, poor man, he knows.

She visits Daenerys in her room that night. Ser Jaime guards her and she is glad of it. The little girl is up in bed, reading a book by candlelight. She is very fond of them, so like her brother at that age that it almost hurts. Her silvery hair has been braided for the night, she looks like a little angel in her white nightgown with the great black book in her lap.

"What are you reading, my love?"

She is not as shy and scared as she was before. When she speaks, you can hear what she says these days. At least when Joffrey or Cersei are not around. "Maester Alun's writings on fantastic beasts of the world," she says. "Tyrion lent it to me. There are some excerpts from Septon Barth's _Unnatural History _here." She sighs. "I would love to read Septon Barth's book in the original."

"King Baelor burnt them all, you know."

"Yes, but there might perhaps be some across the Narrow Sea?" Daenerys says hopefully. "Tyrion thought there might be."

"I really wish you would not speak so frequently and so familiarly of the dwarf. He is no good." Daenerys does not argue, she has been brought up to be respectful to her elders. "And even if they are some few copies in the Free Cities, it is not likely that you will be allowed to go gallivanting across the world to find them." She takes the book away, douses a few candles so that Daenerys can sleep in peace. "Do you still have dragon dreams, sweetling?"

"Yes." Daenerys shivers. "Mummer's dragons on cloth poles. Dragons, white and black, on a field of fire. I hate them."

"They are your legacy. Your brother Rhaegar had queer dreams too. He never told me what they were but he believed them to be prophetic." She sighs. "Perhaps I encouraged his dreamings and mystic fantasizing too much. It brought him to peril. Just as my grandfather's love of prophecy saddled me with your father and brought me nothing but grief."

"Sometimes I dream about him too. Rhaegar," Daenerys says in a small, hushed voice. "He had eyes like mine."

"He did." She strokes her daughter's hair. "Do you know why I named you Daenerys? I was delirious at your birth but the name came to me as though someone had whispered it in my ear. It was the only one that fit."

"Why, mother?"

"The first Daenerys brought peace to a fractured realm," she says. "You remember your history? She wed the Martell prince though her heart belonged to another. She did her duty."

"Is that what I was born to do? To do my duty for another's advantage?" She says it innocently but she looks hurt, as though her own mother has betrayed her.

_Forgive me. You are the sacrifice. _"Yes, my poor child," Rhaella says, kissing her forehead. "As I did, when I was a girl, wed to secure my grandfather's ambitions. I _hated_ Aerys. You and I are alike. We were always born to be another's creature." And low in her daughter's ear, too low for the mice in the floorboards or the birds in the cracks in the walls to hear, she whispers, "Your nephew lives. And you must be his queen."

* * *

_Known as Rhaena of Pentos, for the city of her __birth, she was no dragonrider, her hatchling having died __some years before, but she brought three dragon's eggs __with her to the Vale, where she prayed nightly for their __hatching._

**\- The Princess and the Queen**

* * *

**294 AC, Casterly Rock**

For Daenerys' tenth birthday, Jon Arryn gifts her a dragon's egg from the clutch at the Vale. A princely gift for there are only two left but the old man is queerly fond of the studious little girl. _It is your legacy, _he writes to her. The scales are as white as a maiden's heart, flecked with gold.

Daenerys presses it to her cheek and cries out that it is warm. "What nonsense," Rhaella says, touching it for herself. Stone cold. "You are being foolish."

An ugly rumor runs through the castle that one of Robert's lovers, a serving-maid at the Rock, has borne twins and that Cersei has had the babes thrown into the sea, the mother sold to a slaver. "Watch out for her," Rhaella warns her daughter. "She has no love for you, no matter how sweetly she speaks to you."

Daenerys smiles wanly. "I know that. She slaps me and kicks me and encourages Joffrey to do the same. She hates me."

"How old is Lord Stark's daughter now?" Rhaella asks Cersei mildly. "I hear that she is the striking image of her mother, a great beauty."

"A year younger than Joff. That would make her seven." Cersei smiles sourly. "Old woman, you are scheming."

"Daenerys could be married to Tommen. If you insist on a marriage."

"I would rather have the poverty-stricken little princess than the northern wolf-pup," Cersei says. "Wrap up your plots. I will have no trade with them."

* * *

_The Water Gardens are my favorite place __in this world, ser. One of my ancestors had them built to please his Targaryen bride and free her from the dust and heat of Sunspear. Daenerys was __her name. She was sister to King Daeron the Good, and it was her marriage that made Dorne part of the Seven Kingdoms. The whole realm knew __that the girl loved Daeron's bastard brother Daemon Black-fyre, and was loved by him in turn, but the king was wise enough to see that the good of __thousands must come before the desires of two, even if those two were dear to him._

**\- A Dance with Dragons**

* * *

**298 AC, King's Landing**

Jaime Lannister thinks her an unfeeling mother. He is only half right.

"Who did this to her?" she screams, dragging her daughter through the open court. The delicate silk of her gown is rent, the robin's egg blue rusted with blood. Some men flinch and look away when they see her small, pale breasts bared, others look on avariciously at the tender, torn flesh. Bite marks cover her arms and shoulders. "Who did this to her?"

She shoves her daughter and sends her sprawling at the foot of the Iron Throne. "Make an end of her," Rhaella screams, knowing the powerful allure of making an impression, a scene that sticks in men's minds. "She is already half dead."

Daenerys sobs, her whole body shaking in misery. Past all modesty, she lets the gown fall from her neck and shoulders and Robert, old lecher even though he is, widens his eyes, not in lust but in horror. "Joffrey!" he bellows like a bear. "JOFFREY!"

Cersei rises, perhaps to protest at this defamation of her precious boy, perhaps to pull Daenerys up herself and say, _the girl likes to make a scene. She is not so bad off as she seems. _But Robert shoves her aside and lumbers down the stairs himself. But not as quickly as Ser Jaime who drapes his own cloak over the girl, to hide her shame, as protective as a father or an older brother.

"The prince and his hound took her to the kennels," Rhaella says coldly. "Is she his bitch or his betrothed?"

She stands her ground, steely, unperturbed, while the court swirls and eddies about her in confusion. Lord Tywin grips her arm. "I will have words with my grandson," he says curtly, the iron note of promise in his voice. "He must be taken in hand."

She wrenches herself free. "The Lannisters pay their debts, they say. With interest? What did the poor girl ever do to your precious Joanna that your grandson should treat her so?"

Daenerys is almost fourteen, Aegon should be sixteen. _A man grown, _she thinks with satisfaction. _Let the stories spread, like weeds, like wildfire. He will come with fire and sword to avenge his bride. He will have a noble purpose. _

She visits Daenerys that night in her chambers. The girl is lying in her bath, the water so hot that it scalds Rhaella's fingers when she dips her hands in it. The air smells strongly of medicinal herbs. She has the look of a drowned woman, eyes shut, lips parted, skin tinged with green and hair white as lightning.

"My poor sweetling," she whispers, caressing her face. "You were so brave." _Forgive me. You are the sacrifice. _

Daenerys opens her eyes a chink. They are as black as stones in the dim light. "Did I do right?" she whispers anxiously.

"Yes, just as you were bid. Would you like me to bring you the dragon's egg?"

She nods faintly. Rhaella lays it in her arms and the girls coils herself around it, like a serpent around treasure. "I am the blood and seed of the dragon," Daenerys says sleepily. "And he is only a lion-cub. I can be brave."

* * *

_"As a girl, though... she __was once smitten with a young knight from the stormlands who wore her favor at a tourney and named her queen of love and beauty. A brief thing."_

_"What happened to this knight?"_

_"He put away his lance the day your lady mother wed your father. Afterward he became most pious, and was heard to say that only the Maiden __could replace Queen Rhaella in his heart._

**\- A Dance with Dragons**

* * *

**299-300 AC, King's Landing**

A summer chill, a sudden fever strikes Jon Arryn dead. And as Varys has promised her, the realm descends into madness.

King Aegon has a dragon's egg of his own she is told, as black as Daenerys' is white and streaked with scarlet. A gift from a Pentoshi magister who has shown himself eager to finance the new king's war. _Perhaps that is what Daenerys meant when she dreamt of dragons black and white. _Daenerys thinks not. "The dragons are always fighting in my dreams," she says. "And I am to marry Aegon."

"If my children come to any harm," Cersei swears to her, "I will have you and your daughter burned, you witch."

"Fire," Rhaella says serenely, "cannot kill a dragon." But she is not afraid. Before Jon Arryn died, he presented her with her own honor guard to secure her safety. A good man and wise, he did not entrust them to one of Kingsguard but instead to an old friend of hers. _What a man will not do for loyalty, perhaps he will do for love, _he had said with a meaningful look in his eyes.

She had flushed. _It was a passing fancy, a summer's dream, _she had told him. _It could never amount to anything._

_Nevertheless, Ser Bonifer Hasty and his Holy Hundred will see you through any trials. _

Robert and Lord Stark don their armor, dark as coal, light as ice. Robb Stark, named for the usurper, rides into battle for the first time with his father. He is very young, very anxious to please. "And very handsome," Daenerys remarks. "A pity that he will have to die."

"Did he flirt with you?"

Daenerys giggles, more light-hearted than Rhaella has ever seen her. "Oh mother," she says reproachfully, "You know how Tyrion has always spoiled me. I would rather have a book than a boy."

"Sometimes I feel that you take entirely too much after your brother," Rhaella says gravely. "And that is not a compliment." Prince Tommen is dispatched in the guise of a page-boy to Casterly Rock, Princess Myrcella sent north to be fostered at Winterfell. She is promised to Robb Stark. _Not that that will save them._

They are children but not so young as Rhaenys was. Rhaella will shed no tears over their deaths.

Battles are fought, on water, on land. The crowned stag and the dragon rise and fall, rise and fall. Men slip and slide in their own blood, skeletons and severed heads crowd the rivers and the roads. The realm starves, the white ravens bring tidings of autumn and at her window Rhaella sits sewing as she waits for news, Daenerys reads and watches.

One day, Cersei is found strangled in her own bedchamber, Jaime dead beside her. Varys tells her that she had schemed to burn down the city entire. _I will have you and your daughter burned, you witch._

Prince Joffrey, his mamma's darling, is found at sea leagues away but he is found. Rhaella wants him to be burnt immediately. Daenerys, surprisingly, councils prudence. "I have been reading a great deal," she says mildly, "and there is much value in king's blood, so the red priests say. Perhaps we should wait and see if he can be put to better use."

Varys bows and murmurs that the princess is as wise as she is fair.

With his nephew's death, Tyrion swears himself to Daenerys. "I will be your man for life, my lady," he says. "I offer you my savage wit, my sage counsel and my sword arm. I will serve you with tongue or fingers or tumbling antics, if you will."

Daenerys smiles. "Oh get up," she says fondly and to Rhaella's great disgust, lifts the imp up herself. "You were once my only friend," she says solemnly. "I remember your kindness. And now as I rise so will you, my lord of Lannister."

The sixth Aegon lands at King's Landing three hundred years after the first.

"Leave off your septa's habits," Rhaella tells her daughter. "We must dress you as befits a queen." The girl allows herself to be plucked and primed, trussed into an elaborate confection of cloth-of-silver spangled with diamonds. It has come from Cersei's own wardrobe. _The hand of justice is long but consistent. _

"What will he be like?" Daenerys asks anxiously. "Do you think he will be like Joffrey?"

"We have heard no ill reports of him," Rhaella allows. "He is said to be a kingly lad, raised to rule. But that might be because Varys dissembled. However he knows that he owes his crown to us. Remember, child, Aegon is only king because you and I, the true Targaryen queens, supported his claim."

Daenerys thrusts her chin out. "I am not afraid," she says, "I am the blood and seed of the dragon. And I have endured worse."

They wait at the drawbridge of Maegor's Holdfast, servants and men-at-arms and courtiers streaming out behind them like a many-colored cloak. The autumn wind is brisk, Rhaella's cheeks ache from smiling but she is happy, deliriously happy. Daenerys squeezes her hand in excitement. _This is how it should have been, _she thinks. _I can forget those long years. I will forget them as I would a nightmare in the morning. _

"Here he comes, the flower of chivalry himself," Tyrion Lannister murmurs.

Aegon rides a tall white horse, his hair of silver-gold flying free behind him. His mail and plate are gilded, bright as a mirror in the sunshine, and he presents a regal picture. He draws up right before them and vaults off lightly to kneel before them.

"Lady grandmother I owe you my life and my throne," he murmurs. He has a sharp, handsome face and his eyes are a blueish-violet, like larkspur growing in the hedges. "And you too, my lady princess. Sweet Daenerys, gentle princess, I have come for you."

She smiles at him faintly and then exchanges a glance with Rhaella. And in a flash they see the truth in eachother's eyes, mother and daughter both. _This is not Rhaegar's son. This is not Aegon. _

But Rhaella steps forward. She has endured treachery, usurpers, assassins, a cup overflowing with sorrow and bitterness for years. And this is only a boy, the euncuh's feigned boy true but nothing to the men who have broken before she has.

"Welcome, grandson," she says firmly and stoops to kiss him. _Let them think I am loyal. Let them think I am their tame pet. _"Welcome to your realm at last."

* * *

**A/N: We only catch fleeting glimpses of Rhaella, mostly through her role as a victim of her fate, so I had to extrapolate from her children's characters. I thought she would be like Dany, extremely proud of herself and her heritage, Viserys, cruel sometimes to further her own aims, and like Rhaegar, compassionate, wise enough though she had limited scope for her power. I hope I did a good job of portraying her. As always, reviews are extremely welcome!**


	3. Lyanna

**283 AC, The Tower of Joy**

"He is king." Her skin was cracking in the heat, like plaster peeling off an old wall, and her voice was a crone's rasp but Ned Stark had never seen such assurance in a woman's eyes, never before in his sister's. Lya looked at him in the way he remembered his father doing, eyes like iron that yielded not an inch. "He was born to be king. Rhaegar dreamed of it."

"If he did, then he was the only one." Ned gestured to the arrow-slit, outside which red mountains baked under the pitiless Dornish sun. "Outside these walls they will call you his paramour and your boy a bastard."

Ser Gerold's fingers brushed against the hilt of his sword, only the lightest flutter of a warning. Very pleasantly he said, "Your lady sister wed the prince at Summerhall. There was a septon. There were witnesses."

"That would be no marriage, not even by southron law." He could feel the headache building up in his temple, the slow throb of sheer exhaustion. His sword weighed heavy on his hip, his duty heavier still on his conscience. "Prince Rhaegar was wed already."

"Targaryens make their own laws," Lyanna bit out.

"King Aegon-" Ser Oswell began.

"I know all about Aegon and his queens," Ned snapped. "Ser, you forget that the first Aegon had dragons."

"So will he," Lyanna whispered. "He is the prince that was promised."

A look passed between her and Ser Arthur and he finished for her as though they had made a game out of it in those long months of strain, repeating the words between themselves for reassurance. "And his is the song of ice and fire."

Ser Gerold's hands were firmly around the hilt of his sword now. Three against one, he had not brought his men up to his sister's sickbed. In the next room, the wet-nurse cooed to the infant, his nephew (how hard it was to think of the babe as a part of him by blood). "Will you stand with us or against, Lord Stark?"

_Lord _Stark. The weight of the words registered on his sister's face. She must have known that their father and Brandon were dead, but it was one thing to be told and another to hear him being addressed by the title.

Ned unbuckled his sword and knelt, offering it on the flat of his palms to her. "You will always be my sister," he told her. _When the snows fall and the white winds blows, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. _Had he not learned those words at their mother's knees? "And if you were Rhaegar's wife, then you are my liege lady and your son is my king. I am yours, heart and soul, my lady."

Tears clung to her eyelashes but somewhere, somehow, in this pitiless place his sister had changed from the laughing girl he remembered. She took his hands in her own hot, dry palms and gave him the kiss of peace, lip to closed lip. "As the gods are my witness, the old and the new," she said, "I will be worthy of your faith, brother."

* * *

**283 AC, Casterly Rock**

"The queen will not stand for it," Tygett said firmly. "Not Rhaella. She's already crowned Viserys and she's breeding again. She might have a boy again."

"Rhaella might have been a force once but she is spent now. She is a woman alone, clinging to a scrap of a rock surrounded by a sea of enemies," Kevan reminded them. "She might die in childbed - is it so unlikely at her age and with her health, poor lady? - and then who has she left to defend her boy? The castellan at best."

"Are we then to bend the knee to Arryn and his puppet? Or Stark and his sister's bastard?" Gerion snarled. "We are _lions_, brothers. I say we set our own course and crown Tywin. It was Jaime who slew Aerys, the throne should be ours by right of conquest."

Genna's nephew had been brought into the Lannister family council for the first time, but only as a courtesy. He was here to listen and learn and for the moment, he was playing the part of the dutiful adept to perfection. Not for the first time she wondered whether anything went through that handsome head of his. Cersei, on the other hand, the girl had a certain low cunning that might blossom into brilliance given the right tempering but she was prideful, willful, spoiled. What were quick wits when combined with a clouded mind? _She might grow out of it, they are both still so young._

The boy spoke up suddenly. She had not expected him to speak up, let alone advise caution. "Let the stag and the wolf fight it out," Jaime suggested. "As we did before."

Tygett smiled approvingly. "Well said, nephew. Let them tear each other to pieces."

Tywin was still studying the map of Westeros set out before him. Silver pins marked Stark's forces, black Baratheon's, scarlet Lannisters and gold the remaining loyalist forces who were sworn to the child Viserys. Day by day, the gold dwindled, the south near Dorne turning to silver, the east black. It was not Eddard Stark's charisma or his nephew's doubty claim that had caused this shift in the tide but that of the Kingsguard who had accompanied Lyanna Stark to Dorne and upheld her child's claim. The White Bull, the Sword of the Morning... these were names that could turn out tens of thousands in the Seven Kingdoms. Dorne, which had the most to gain by the death of the woman that Rhaegar had preferred to their princess, had, most astonishingly, turned to the paramour's side. It defied comprehension.

Finally Genna's oldest brother nodded. "Yes," he said. "For now, we wait."

Genna found Cersei in the rose gardens, a book in her lap and innocence on her face. "You don't need to pretend with your auntie," Genna told her wryly. "I know all the tricks, I used to spy on my father too when I was your age. Not that he ever discussed anything of interest in his private councils."

Cersei let the look drop from her face and it curdled like spoiled milk. "Father said he would make me queen," she said sharply. "Or a princess, at least. If it was not to be Rhaegar, it was to be Viserys. We should be supporting the Baratheon, he's in King's Landing, he's young and he has no wife."

"How I admire your single-mindedness," Genna said, taking her niece's hand. "If it were only so simple."

"I don't see why not," Cersei said sharply. "Father could turn the tide if he chose to. I thought we sealed our alliance with Baratheon and Arryn when we gave them Rhaegar's brats."

"You had care of them," Genna said. "You served as Elia's lady-in-waiting, you knew them almost from the hour of their birth. Yet you speak so coldly of them."

Cersei turned her pretty head scornfully. "They had to die," she said. "If Elia died in childbirth - and we all expected she would, the next time - and Rhaegar made me his wife, I would have held silk pillows to their little faces myself."

Genna smiled. "You are beginning to think like a queen. Do not underestimate your father, my love. No doubt there is something in the alliance between Arryn and Baratheon that gives him pause and makes him consider that playing Stark might be the better bet. Stark was Arryn's protege too, their wives are sisters, who knows which the old falcon might prefer? They both have claims, of a sort." The Tully forces had not declared themselves yet, they had withdrawn from King's Landing to Riverrun where Hoster Tully prevaricated between his two daughters, married to enemy camps.

"But Baratheon-"

"Infants die in the cradle all the time," Genna said softly, persuasively. "If his nephew should die - how sad - Stark might be tempted to take the throne for himself. He has a wife, and so? Wives die all the time, particularly ones as insignificant as Hoster Tully's daughter. He has a son, and so? The boy might be made Lord of the North, if he grows to manhood, while _yours_... but we are getting ahead of ourselves."

* * *

**283 AC, Riverrun**

Lysa's wails seemed to make the castle shake. "Is she running mad?" Edmure whispered. He had been raised on ghoulish stories of women's hysteria, women who could not be trusted because they thought with their wandering women's parts, women turning to wolves when their time of month was upon them and now he looked well and truly terrified. Catelyn could not fault him, their sister's screams did not hold the timber of a woman who was quite sane in her mind.

"You always choose her," she was screaming. "Always her. All of you. Cat! Cat! Cat! It's never _me_!"

"You go to the sept and light a candle for her," Catelyn told Edmure firmly. At least it would take him out of Lysa's way and whatever filth she chose to spew. He nodded, looking relieved, and took to his heels. She hesitated and then squared her shoulders and approached Lysa's room. She knew her duty.

She was being held down by the maids, her face white, her eyes rolling back in her head, foaming at the lip like an overheated horse. Their father knelt by the bed, a deep sadness on his face. She knelt by his side, uncertain of how she could help but knowing that she must at least offer. Lysa had been like this ever since their father had broken the news that he had chosen to side with her husband over Lysa's. Of course Lysa would make it about _her_. She was still such a child.

"You!" Somehow Lysa had seen. She gave an otherworldly shriek and wrestled her arms out of the maids' grip, hands clawed like talons and reaching out madly for Catelyn's face. If she had not jumped back, she would have been raked from forehead to chin. "You bitch! You take everything from me, my wedding, my husband, my baby-"

"I never took anything from you, Lysa!" Catelyn protested. She would have said more but her father put his hand on her shoulder and drew her up.

"That's enough," Hoster said wearily and nodded to the maids. "Douse her with milk of the poppy. Perhaps she might sleep it off."

"No! No!" Lysa was screaming terrible things, incoherent things that made no sense, betrayal, lies, but the maids poured the mixture that the maester had made for her down her throat, while Hoster took Catelyn out of the room and shut the door behind them.

"Your sister has much on her mind," he told her. "Poor thing."

"I don't understand," Catelyn said, bewildered. "The things she was accusing me of, _us_ of-"

Hoster stooped and kissed her forehead. "You are my sweet daughter and the joy of my life," he said. "Lysa is a trial that I must bear." He was hiding something from her, they both were. But she could bide her silence, wasn't that what women were trained to do after all? Wait and keep their peace.

"Father," she said hesitantly, when he put his arm through hers and escorted her down the gallery. "Did you choose me over her?" _Did you choose my husband over hers? Did you choose me over her because I have a babe in the cradle, a boy with your eyes, and she is still barren? _

"I do not play favorites with my daughters," he told her. "I chose based on the advice I received, my own reasoning, my own wits. Which I still have, even if your sister does not."

She dipped her head, in acquiescence to his manly wisdom. "Of course," she said. "You must do as you think best. And now if you will excuse me, I will go see to my son."

He smiled and put his hand on her head in blessing. "You're a good girl, Cat," he said tenderly. "You always were."

She watched him walk down the gallery alone, taking the measure of his straight back and his head held high. He had lied to her face as though she were still a child in the nursery, as though she were only a woman with the wits of a milk-cow. Was that how he saw all women? Had she always been this blind? _The truth of it is that you would rather see Lysa a widow than me, _she thought. _For all your talk of strategy and choice, it comes down to this. Such a small thing to balance a kingdom on._

* * *

**283 AC, Yronwood**

Lyanna's breasts were bound as flat as a board, but they seeped and ached whenever her baby cried. But the maester would not consent to her feeding him herself, she had almost died in childbed and the last thing that she would want to risk would be the milk sickness. Let the wet nurses do their task.

Arthur had made her see reason. He had taken her hand and asked her if she would rather have the short-lived pleasure of nursing her baby herself or ensuring his destiny by living for him? She'd left her baby in Sunspear, under Princess Mellario's watchful eye, but his cries still haunted her dreams. They had wanted her to remain in Sunspear, while the two armies battled it out in the Boneway but she would not hear of it. She would be safe in the castle with the Yronwoods, if the battle turned she might beg Arryn and Baratheon for clemency as women had always done. She could beg for her brothers at least - Ned on the battlefield, Benjen at Winterfell. There was nothing she could do for her son in Dorne, if the tides shifted, the Martells would take care of him in whatever way they chose. She could not shelter him with her body anymore as she had done for nine months.

The Yronwoods had fought the Storm Kings for time immemorial, the marcher lands contested bloodily between them, it was only right that this battle should play out in the Boneway.

"You are a brave woman, my lady," Lady Ynys said. She was the oldest of the Yronwood daughters, Lyanna's own age but unwed still. She approached Lyanna with a cup of honey-mead, almost shyly as though uncertain whether her presence would be welcome.

Lyanna smiled at her and made space on the window-seat. "If I were brave, I would be down there," she said, gesturing to the far distance where they could just see the glow of a thousand camp-fires, like a field of fireflies in the gauzy dusk. The Boneway was perilously steep, as treacherous as a whore men said and the fields would be red with carnage in the morning. _Is this to be the __thousandth battle in my name? _she thought and shivered. Her hands, folded in her lap and scented with rose-attar from the Yronwood women's coffers, should have run red with blood. "But look at me, sitting safe with you."

"Women don't fight," Lady Ynys said. "Well, not anymore."

"I did. But that was another life again," Lyanna said. _I will never pick up a sword again, _she thought. _I will never sit a horse with a lance in my hands._

Ynys' black eyes were owlish in her face. "Your lord father never let you!"

"No, he never did," Lyanna said. "I was too clever for him by half. More fool, I. I would have been better off if I tended my spindle like a proper woman."

Ynys shook her head in confusion. "But then you might never have met Prince Rhaegar." She knew the story, everyone did now, it had come out in bits and pieces and now the singers were spreading it all throughout Dorne. It made a pretty story, the willful wolf-maid and the silver prince, the sacred child conceived in secret at Summerhall, those precious few nights the lovers had spent together in the mountains, their love guarded by knights of legend, before he had left her forever for his duty and his death.

"Would that I never had," Lyanna said sincerely. "My father would have still been alive, my brother too. Thousands would have still been alive."

"You would have been Robert Baratheon's wife then. That would have been terrible."

_That would have been a kinder fate than I deserve. _"Yes," Lyanna said dully. "I think I would rather be Robert Baratheon's wife and lie still and miserable under him every night than queen over skulls and ashes as I am now."

In his tent, Ned re-read the letter from his wife again. The words were formal, strained. There was no lust between them - how could there be after only a few nights together? -, no affection. Only duty. She wrote of their son and how he was faring. Robb, named before his father had broken with his best friend forever. She wrote that she missed him and prayed that he came soon to her. He did not believe that, they barely knew each other. She was comfortably settled in her father's castle, if the tides of battle turned, Jon Arryn would be merciful to his wife's sister no matter what her husband or father had done. Robert would not hurt her son, he would remember the boys who had grown up together in the Eyrie and be merciful.

In the castle upon the hill, his sister would be praying with hot, dry eyes. She prayed constantly, even when she was walking, talking, listening. She did not need a godswood to pray nor a sept, she did not need to be on her knees, she did not need to close her eyes or fold her hands together. Their father's burned carcass, their brother's broken neck, her husband's battered body, these were always before her eyes, open, closed. Sometimes, he thought, looking into her bleached face and hard eyes, he thought she must surely break. She was only sixteen, she had never been trained to be anything more than a charming, spoiled girl. He did not know where she found the strength to go on living everyday.

Tom raised the flap of his tent and Ned put the letter away. He must remember to write to his lady wife before morning, she might want some last words to pass to their son if he should die in the morning. "Someone to see you, m'lord," Tom said. A tall man entered, unbidden, the hood of his plain brown cloak drawn deeply over his face so that it was in shadow. At first Ned took it for one of the camp's spies, late-come with pressing news. But then the man spoke.

"My boy," he said simply. "I've missed you." It was Jon. Ned leaped up, as though scalded by the coals in the small hearth before him. He shot Tom an accusing look but his man had already slipped away guiltily. Jon smiled faintly. "Do you really fear me that much?"

His sword hung out of his reach but Jon spread his arms, to show that he too was unarmed. "I have never been your enemy, Ned."

"Nor I yours," Ned said steadily. He spoke haltingly, the words an old ritual that dredged slowly up to his mind, the words that Jon had taught him when he was still a squire. "Will you break bread with me?" The man had come to him in good faith, unarmed, by his honor he could afford him nothing but courtesy.

Jon smiled, a pleased and approving teacher. "It would give me the greatest pleasure."

Ned put out the loaf of bread, the cold cheese and the pitcher of cider that he had been dining on himself and cut it for Jon as though he was still in truth his lord's squire. "I knighted Robert on his eighteenth nameday myself but you refused the honor," Jon said.

"I would not kneel in a sept to receive it, not even from you," Ned said stiffly. "I meant no disparagement but your gods are not mine."

"And now my king is not yours." Jon shrugged. "I am an old man but I wish to the gods that I never lived long enough to see this day, when the two boys that I loved as sons meet against each other in enmity."

Ned said nothing, because really what was there left to say?

"By law, I suppose, the crown should go to Prince Viserys," Jon said thoughtfully. "But then there are others who say that might makes right, which would make Robert king."

"Lyanna's son-" Ned began.

"So you still claim that the child is not Rhaegar's bastard?" Jon said. "Of course your sister would lie, better to call herself an honored bride now rather than a shamed mistress or worse, a victim of lust and rape."

"There were witnesses. Ser Gerold foremost among them."

"Why should Whent not play kingmaker now that the kingdom is up for grabs? He would not be the first White Knight to turn colors to suit the times."

Ned was reminded briefly of Criston Cole. "I believe Lyanna," he said simply. "Her word is enough for me."

Jon nodded. "And she is your blood. Her and her boy." He put his hand on Ned's shoulder. "As you are all but mine. I do not think that I will ever father a son now, though my good father swore that my bride was as fertile as she was young."

"You once called us your legacy," Ned remembered. "We were honored."

"I must have done a poor job then," Jon said. "You left King's Landing in anger, after you saw what was done to the children. A poor piece of work and not of my desiring - the boy could be sent to the Wall as I mean to do with Viserys if I ever hold him. Rhaenys, well she was only a girl. Did you hate Robert so much then?"

"I never hated Robert," Ned said slowly. "Yes, I was angry at him and yes there were words between us. But I left to find Lyanna."

"He hates you," Jon said dispassionately. "He feels that you betrayed him. You and your sister, she was to be his love, his prize, his queen. And you were his brother. It cut deeply into his soul and brought out all that was dark and cruel." He shook his head sadly. "You broke him as a man. And I do not think that he will ever be fit to be a king again."

Ned felt like he might throw up, like a lad on the eve of his first battle and not his hundredth. "I am sorry," was all he could say. "I never meant to hurt him. Will you tell him that from me?" He was almost pleading.

Jon nodded. "It will bring him scant comfort now but I will." He set down his cider. "Ned, I cannot fight against you and I cannot fight against Robert. It would be as unnatural as asking a father to pick between two sons."

"You set your levies to Robert's cause," Ned said. "I wrote to you myself to ask you for your aid-"

"It was one thing to fight against Dornishmen, against Riverlanders, against Ser Gerold's pick and a host that had crowned an infant bastard king," Jon said. "I believed in Robert, I did not believe in your sister's son. It is another thing entirely to face you in battle, Ned."

His meaning dawned on Ned. "So you will hold out on the morrow? Have you told Robert?"

Jon nodded. "I will tell him. He will not be best pleased." He smiled ironically at the understatement, Robert Baratheon had never been a man to check his temper and having been crowned king, seeping with rage and vengeance, would not have any sweetening effect on his nature. "And I will give him your last words. For surely they must be either the last you send to him or the last he hears from you."

"One or the other must die come the morrow," Ned said. He had always known this, ever since he had sworn his sword and shield to his sister's service. It had been so for Rhaegar and Robert, it would be so for him and Robert. And always, always, over Lyanna. _Never was a name more cursed._

"One or the other," Jon said sadly. He put his hand on Ned's head, a blessing, his pale blue eyes weary with exhaustion. "It has made me happier than I can say to see your face again. May all the gods bless and keep you, my cautious Ned, my son. The old and the new."

He left soon after, a tall man shrouded in a plain brown cloak, too large for him, stooped with care and exhaustion. Ned watched him leave and began a letter to his wife and the infant son that he had never seen and might never see.

And in the morning, Lyanna Stark watched from her castle tower and Jon Arryn watched from his camp and almost at the same time, both were given the same news. Ned Stark was dead, his chest caved in from a blow from the king's warhammer. Robert Baratheon was dead, stabbed in the heart from his best friend's sword.

* * *

**284 AC, Sunspear**

"He's so _small_," Arianne said doubtfully, peering into the little king's cradle. She let him grasp her finger and he cooed in pleasure. A tuft of dark hair curled on his forehead, he wasn't going to look anything like his illustrious father it seemed.

"He'll grow," Mellario assured her.

"I don't think I want to marry him," Arianne said uncertainly. "He's so much littler than me. I'm the oldest, why do I have to marry him at all? I could be Princess of Dorne like grandmother. Then I'd never have to leave here." She had begun to pout.

Mellario could not allow this train of thought to continue. Doran had a dream for their daughter. "You are to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms," she told her only daughter firmly. "That is a greater destiny by far than being a mere Princess of Dorne. Now run along and play with your cousins, you'll set the babe to fussing with your teasing."

Oberyn wandered into the nursery, comfortable in his airy yellow silks and eating a pomegranate. He smiled and offered her a scattering of seeds when he saw her looking but she shook her head, feeling uneasy. Her good brother always had that effect on her and he delighted in it. He had invited her to his bed once - her and Doran - but she had declined, of course. She was not Dornish. "The child's all Stark," he observed laconically.

"With Baratheon dead and Prince Viserys in hiding, he's the only king there is," she said dryly. "He can look whatever way he likes."

"Perhaps she slipped Dayne's bastard into the royal cradle," Oberyn suggested idly. "I've seen the way he looks at her. And he was with her all that time, far longer than Rhaegar ever was."

"Oberyn!" she protested, scandalized. "You mustn't say these things-"

"Not that it's like to matter now," Oberyn shrugged. "He's a babe and his mother's scarcely out of her nursery smocks. Arryn's a spent force with his precious boys dead, Lannister hasn't declared himself yet and the only family she has left is an infant nephew and a brother whose voice hasn't broken yet. They can be trained to be anything we want them to be."

"What of the Tullys?" she demanded.

"Lord Hoster played his card and he lost even though he supported the right side," Oberyn said. "His older girl's a widow now, she can be married to our best advantage and she'll have to yield her boy to us. Little Lord Stark can be raised in the royal nursery with his cousin. The younger girl can go scurrying back up to the Eyrie with her husband, he won't be long for the world now, mark my words. And he has a son who's yet unwed, Doran has some ideas about that."

"You will leave for King's Landing in the royal train?" Mellario said. She was pleased to hear it and Oberyn must have guessed because he shot her an amused look.

"So ready to be rid of me, sweet sister?" he murmured, taking a step towards her.

She shrank back, as though he was truly the snake for which he was named. "No, I-"

He laughed and taking her hand, pressed a kiss over her fingers. "I am honored to be a part of the boy king's regency council," he said. "So that takes me neatly out of your way for oh fourteen, sixteen years, I'd say."

"You are always welcome in Dorne," she said feebly, wanting to believe it.

"Dorne will always be my home," he said. "And what a pleasant home to return to, with such a pretty sister in residence. But no, there are things I must attend to in King's Landing, sweet as your company is."

"Lannister?"

He nodded and dropped her hand. A shadow dropped over his face, it was as though he had become another man entirely. Or no, not even a man. A beast, in human skin. _War makes beasts of us all. _The day was warm but she drew her silk shawl tight around herself. "Lorch, to start off with. Clegane. And then - Lannister."

* * *

**284 AC, King's Landing**

She would have to get used to this rathole city at the mouth of a stinking river, this treacherous castle built on innocent blood and lies. She would have to learn to call it home.

_Promise me, Lyanna. _

She squared her shoulders and smiled at Jon Arryn. He did not return it. No, of course he would not. She had brought enough grief to his doorstep. She had all but murdered his boys. How sick he must be at the sight of her, but nevertheless he treated her with all courtesy.

"You must hate me," she said baldly. There was nothing she could preface it with.

He shook his head. "Child," he said, "When you come to my age, you will realize there is no use in hating or loving. You are what you are and you have made of your life as you saw right."

"I was fourteen when I saw Rhaegar for the first time and he saw me," she said. "A child. My destiny was already written in stone then."

"I knew your lord father," he said simply. "You were already betrothed before you ever laid eyes on Prince Rhaegar. Your duty was clear. You chose to write your own destiny, my lady, and thousands paid in blood for it."

"And I never stop reliving the guilt of it," she snapped. "Gods know, I am _sorry_. Sorrier than you can ever know, my lord. But I have a son and I made my husband a promise to him, long before he was ever born, and I will stand by it while there is still breath left in my body. So, my lord, tell me, will you stand with me or against me?"

"Neither. I wish you well in your ventures," Jon said mildly. "But I am an old man and I do not believe that I will leave long enough to see them bear fruit."

"You gave my father good advice," she said. "You were his friend. You were like a father to my brother. Why cannot you be the same for me? Please, my lord, I beg you. I am all alone. Help me."

He held up his hands to forestall her. "You have chosen to slip in bed with the vipers," he said. "I cannot help you."

She had tried her best. There really was nothing she could do. "So you are going back home?" she said dully. "Back to the Eyrie?"

He nodded. "I will stop by Riverrun to take my lady wife with me."

"I wish you joy in your marriage," she said flatly and he chuckled.

"I wish it too," he said dryly. "But I do not expect it."

"I wish I could go home too," she blurted out. She could not help it. She had no one to talk to now. "But I never can now, I suppose."

He gave her a look that was almost pitying. "No, child, I suppose not." He hesitated. "I have one last thing to tell you if you have the wisdom to hear me out." She nodded. "Dorne bears a blood-grudge against the Lannisters, against Lord Tywin in particular and you know well why. But there must be balance in the kingdom, you cannot be ruled wholly by the Martells and expect to see your son reach his majority. And you yourself have confessed to being alone, to being fearful. Do you not think it time you took a husband?"

She flushed and looked away, but he was right. She knew that. Everyone knew that. She was barely seventeen and she had no experience at all, not in battle, not in council. Only a steadfast determination to do right by Rhaegar's son and the ravaged kingdom that had been left to her. That was not enough. The proposals had begun pouring in long ago. "You think I should marry Ser Jaime." The Kingslayer. He could be released from his vows, now that he had already broken the most sacred one, she supposed.

Jon snorted. "The boy? Gods no. What good would a boy of not quite nineteen be? No, I did not mean Jaime Lannister."

She was lost. "But you said, about the Lannisters-"

He sighed, as though she was hopelessly inept and he was almost sorry to be leaving her. "Child," he said, "I meant his lord father. I meant that you should marry Lord Tywin and seal an alliance between the Starks and Lannisters."

**A/N: Well this could have played out in many different ways. There are so many different Lyanna-lives fanfics out there that I wanted to do something different, focusing on how the end of the war would have played out. If anyone is interested, I'll probably add another chapter, dealing with Stannis, the Tyrells, Viserys and Daenerys and of course if Lyanna marries Tywin. Leave a review!**


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